Importance of Expository Text in the Classroom Teachers play a significant role in getting children prepared for college and the real world. There are a variety of skills a teacher gives to her students that do so. One of the skills involves comprehension of expository texts. It is extremely important that children can comprehend expository texts due to their relevance in today’s society. When thinking about information in today’s society, it is safe to say that technology is involved tremendously. “The ability to use the Internet to access information quickly, sift through volumes of text, evaluate content, and synthesize information from a variety of sources is central to success at school and in the workplace” (Schmar-Dobler, 2003). In order for one to do these things, they must be able to read and comprehend text found on the internet. Since most of the text found on the internet is expository, children need to be exposed to it. Another reason teachers need to provide students with tools to comprehend expository texts relates to standardized testing. 70-80% of content in the current standardized reading test is expository text. This goes to show how relevant expository text actually is today. One of the most efficient strategies in training students on text structure knowledge to facilitate their comprehension of expository texts is using retelling of trade books. “Information trade book retellings can provide students rich opportunities for not only gaining exposure to ex­pository text but also gaining expertise in under­standing this text type” (Moss, 2004). Retelling Stories When one thinks of retellings, they often think of summarizing a story. It is important to know that the two are not the same thing. In order for someone to summarize a story, they must be able to retell a story. A summary is a short explanation of the main ideas in a text, while a retelling involves ones understanding of the text. When a child retells text, a teacher can get an idea of the student’s capability of classifying information and how they construct meaning from a text. Students deeply connect to text and reread it when retelling. Retelling gives children a sense of the way a text is organized and allows them to identify relationships between different texts. Retelling is also important because it helps to develop ones oral language abilities. All of the positive things that come from retellings make it essential to teach students the process of retelling. “As students gain facility in retelling in the early grades, their recounts of ex­pository texts will become increasingly sophisti­cated” (Moss, 2004). Narrative vs. Expository Text Both narrative and expository types of text are used during literacy instruction. “The main purpose of narrative texts is to tell a story, while expository text is intended to inform, describe, or report” (Moss, 2004). Research is done before someone writes expository text and the imagination is used to create characters and such when writing narrative text. Each of the two types of text has their own structure. The structure of narrative text is usually always the same throughout while expository texts differ. The five most common structures for expository text consist of description, sequence, comparison/contrast, cause and effect, and problem and solution. Stories are writt