Following up with my last blog post about the Common Core State Standards I have been interested in how the new standards constantly stress using a piece of literature and a piece of informational text when teaching each reading lesson.  I have challenged my student teachers to do this as they are using the CCSS lesson plan format to teach reading.  I have been impressed with how successful their lessons have been when incorporating the two different types of texts.  My understanding is that one of the reasons the CCSS include both types of texts in every lesson is that students graduating from high school had much weaker comprehension skills when using non-fiction texts than they did for fiction material.  The emphasis is to teach children how to use different strategies for different purposes.  It is appropriate that it would begin in kindergarten where comprehension strategies are being established.  I have been challenging every early childhood teacher to choose a fiction and a non-fiction text, read both to their group and then discuss the differences in the text and the format of the books.