Making Sense of Expository Text

As we continue down this Common Core journey, we are reminded again of the need to teach students to understand how to read expository text.  It seems as though teachers in all content areas always assume that the other teachers are teaching students how to read expository text.  As a general rule, it would not hurt any of us to do our part and explicitly teach text structure.  What better way to help readers understand the author's message?  As a part of the pre-read activities, remind students of what they are reading and use a matrix like this one to break down the different structures.  With regular academic conversations about text structure with students, it will become a non-issue.