The Science Fair Poster That Answers the Wrong Question
Ms. Okafor's class is studying informational text features. Four students present posters about how honeybees communicate. Poster A has a large title, four labeled diagrams of the waggle dance, and a caption reading "Figure 1: Direction and distance are encoded in the angle and duration of the dance." Poster B has the same diagrams but no labels, plus a sidebar titled "Five Fun Bee Facts." Poster C is one long paragraph with no headings. Poster D has headings, a glossary of terms like waggle and hive, and a bolded sentence: "Bees do not use sound to give directions." The assignment asked students to explain how bees tell other bees where flowers are. Ms. Okafor must choose which poster best meets the assignment's purpose and explain her reasoning to the class.
1. Which poster best serves the assignment's purpose, and which text features support your choice? Explain why the other posters fall short.
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Poster A best serves the purpose. The assignment asks students to explain how bees give directions, so the poster needs content that carries that explanation and features that make it easy to find. Poster A's labeled diagrams do real work: the labels identify the angle of the dance and the duration, which are exactly the mechanisms the assignment asks about, and the caption states the key idea in one sentence.
- Poster B has the right diagrams but strips the labels, so the visual no longer explains anything; the sidebar on fun facts is engaging but off-purpose.
- Poster C may contain correct information, but a single unbroken paragraph with no headings forces the reader to hunt for the explanation.
- Poster D has strong features (headings, glossary, bold text) but the bolded claim is about sound, not about direction, so the emphasis points away from the assignment.
The judgement call: good text features only help when they point at the assigned content. Features are tools, not decorations.
2. A classmate says, "Poster D must be best because it has the most features." How would you respond using evidence from the setup?
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I would agree that Poster D has many features, then separate quantity from fit. Poster D has headings, a glossary, and bold text, which are all useful features. But the setup tells us the bolded sentence says bees "do not use sound to give directions." That sentence is emphasized, so a reader skimming will take away a point about sound rather than an explanation of how direction is encoded.
The assignment's purpose is the test. A glossary helps with word meaning, and headings help with navigation, but neither one supplies the explanation of the waggle dance that the assignment requires. Poster A's caption directly states how direction and distance are encoded, which matches the task.
So my response is: features count only when they carry the reader toward the assigned purpose. More features is not the same as better fit.