What Are Text Features? Full List, Examples and Grade Levels

If you have ever skipped to a chapter using the table of contents, checked a diagram instead of re-reading a paragraph, or looked a word up in the glossary at the back, you have used text features. They are the scaffolding around the words.

This guide covers what text features are, a full list with what each one actually does, how they differ from text structure (the single most common mix-up, and there is a good reason for it), what the US standards ask students to do with them at each grade, and how teachers introduce them in class.

What Are Text Features?

A text feature is any element of a text that sits outside the main running prose and exists to make that prose easier to navigate or understand. Reading Rockets describes them as the elements authors use “to organize information and ideas, and to highlight important parts of the text.”

Every text feature does at least one of three jobs:

• It helps you locate information. A table of contents, an index, headings and page numbers all answer the question where is the thing I need?
• It explains something the words alone cannot. A diagram, a map, a chart or a photograph carries information that would take paragraphs to describe, and sometimes could not be described at all.
• It flags what matters. Bold print, italics, sidebars and captions tell you which parts to slow down on.

That third job is the one readers use without noticing. When a word is in bold, you have already been told it is important before you have thought about why.

The Full List of Text Features (And What Each One Does)

Different books and different classrooms name slightly different sets. The table below covers the features that appear across the main published lists, including Reading Rockets’ own chart, grouped by the job they do.

Organizational features — finding your way around

Print features — changes to the words themselves

Graphic features — information carried by pictures

Digital Text Features

Most text-feature lists were written for print and stop there. The standards did not. When students read on a screen — which is most of the time now — they meet a set of features that has no paper equivalent:

• Hyperlinks — do the job of a footnote and an index at once, and are the one text feature that moves you somewhere else.
• Electronic menus — the on-screen equivalent of a table of contents, but normally on screen at all times rather than sitting at the front.
• Icons — carry meaning with no words at all, which makes them the hardest digital feature for a young reader to decode.
• Search boxes and keyword search — replace the index entirely, and require the reader to guess the right term rather than scan a list.
• Interactive elements — animations, expandable sections and interactive charts that reveal information on demand.

These are not a modern add-on that teachers invented. The US standards name them directly: “electronic menus, icons” appear in the grade 1 and grade 2 standards, and “key words, sidebars, hyperlinks” in grade 3. A text-features lesson built only on a printed book is teaching about half of what students are actually being asked to do.

Text Features vs. Text Structure — And Why Everyone Mixes Them Up

This is the single most common confusion on this topic, and it is worth being precise about, because the two are not variations on one idea.

The quick test: if you can put your finger on it without reading a sentence, it is a feature. If you have to read to notice it, it is a structure.

Here is why the confusion is so persistent, and it is not anyone’s fault. In the Common Core reading standards for informational text, both concepts sit at the same standard number — the fifth standard in the Craft and Structure group — and that standard quietly changes subject partway through elementary school. Through grade 3 it is about text features. From grade 4 it is about text structure. Teachers, worksheets and lesson plans that all cite “RI.5” can therefore be talking about two genuinely different things depending on the grade.

What the Standards Ask For, Grade by Grade

If you want to know what a child is actually expected to do with text features at a given age, this is the source. The wording below is quoted from the Common Core State Standards for English Language Arts, Reading: Informational Text. Most US states either use these standards or use their own closely modelled on them, so check your state’s version for the exact local wording.

Two things fall out of reading these in order. First, the explicit text-features work is front-loaded into grades 1 to 3 — by grade 4 the standards assume students can already use them and move on. Second, the emphasis is consistently on locating information efficiently, not on naming the features. A student who can recite twenty feature names but cannot use an index to answer a question has not met the standard.

Text features do keep appearing after grade 3, just under a different standard: RI.4.7 asks students to “interpret information presented visually, orally, or quantitatively (e.g., in charts, graphs, diagrams, time lines, animations, or interactive elements on Web pages).” That is graphic and digital text features by another name.

You can read the full text of each standard at thecorestandards.org.

Nonfiction vs. Fiction Text Features

Text features are most associated with nonfiction, and for a straightforward reason: nonfiction readers often do not read front to back. They arrive with a question and want the answer. Features exist to get them there.

Fiction is usually read in order, from the beginning, so it needs far fewer navigation aids. But “fiction has no text features” is wrong — it has fewer, and different ones.

Fantasy maps and family trees are worth pointing out to students, because they are the clearest evidence that text features are not a nonfiction-only rule.

Three Ways to Group Text Features

Long lists are hard to remember, so classrooms usually group features. There is no single official grouping — different schemes suit different lessons. One that works well is to sort by what the feature is for:

Directional features

Features that point you somewhere: the table of contents, index, headings, page numbers, electronic menus and hyperlinks. They answer “where do I go?” and map directly onto what the grade 1 to 3 standards ask for.

Supplementary features

Features that add information beside the main text without interrupting it: footnotes, sidebars, glossaries and captions. They answer “what else do I need to know here?”

Visual features

Features that carry information as an image: photographs, diagrams, charts, graphs, maps, timelines and cross-sections. They answer “what does this look like?” and often carry information found nowhere in the prose — which is exactly why students who skip them lose content.

Treat these as a teaching convenience rather than fixed categories. Plenty of features sit in two groups at once: a caption is supplementary and visual, and a hyperlink is directional and digital. If a student argues that one belongs somewhere else and can explain why, they have understood the point better than the grouping.

How to Teach Text Features

The teaching sequence most widely recommended, including by Reading Rockets, works in three stages around a reading rather than as a standalone lesson. The key move is to teach one feature at a time instead of handing over the whole list at once.

Before reading

• Show one example of the target feature and ask what students notice about it.
• Ask where they have seen it before and why they think the author used it.
• Name it, define it, and explain its purpose.
• Show more examples of the same feature from books already in the classroom.
• Set a purpose: tell students to watch for more examples as they read.

During reading

• Have students find and mark examples as they go.
• Pause at a good example and ask what it tells them that the words do not.
• Make sure the text you chose actually contains plenty of the target feature — this is the step that most often undoes the lesson.

After reading

• Review the examples students found and ask why the author used each one there.
• Build an anchor chart together (see below).
• Ask students to add the feature to their own writing — producing one is a much stronger test of understanding than identifying one.

A useful assessment: give students a short informational passage with the text features stripped out, and ask them to put the right ones back. Naming a heading is easy. Deciding where a heading belongs is not.

Activities that work

• Text feature scavenger hunt — a list of features, a stack of books, and a race to find one of each.
• Text feature walk — before reading a chapter, students look only at the features and predict what the chapter will cover.
• Print vs. digital comparison — give pairs the same topic in a book and on a website and have them list which features each version uses. This surfaces hyperlinks, menus and search boxes naturally.
• Write the caption — hand out images with captions removed and have students write them. It is harder than it looks and it teaches what a caption is for.

Text Feature Anchor Charts

An anchor chart is a chart built with the class and left on the wall for the rest of the unit, so students can check it independently instead of asking. For text features it usually has three columns: the feature, what it does, and an example the class found themselves.

Two things make the difference between a chart that gets used and one that becomes wallpaper:

• Build it with the class, not before the lesson. A pre-made chart is a poster. One the class filled in as they found examples is a record of their own thinking, and they will actually look at it.
• Use examples from books in the room. “Page 12 of the frogs book” is a reference students can go and check. A generic clip-art example is not.

Add to it one feature at a time as you teach each one, rather than filling it in on day one. A chart that grows across the unit shows progress; a finished chart on day one shows a list.

Common Mistakes

• Teaching identification instead of use. The standards ask students to locate information with text features. Labeling a diagram on a worksheet does not test that; finding an answer in a real book does.
• Introducing all twenty at once. One feature per lesson, taught around a real reading, sticks. A single vocabulary lesson covering the whole list does not.
• Skipping digital features. Students read on screens daily and the standards name menus, icons and hyperlinks explicitly. A print-only unit leaves that out.
• Treating images as decoration. Diagrams, charts and captions routinely carry information that appears nowhere in the prose. Students who skim past them are missing content, not just pictures.
• Confusing features with structure. See the comparison above — and remember that from grade 4 the standards themselves switch to structure under the same standard number.

Frequently Asked Questions

What are text features?

Text features are the parts of a book or article that are not the main body of text — titles, headings, captions, diagrams, glossaries, indexes, bold print, sidebars and similar elements. They help readers locate information and understand it without reading every word.

What are the most common text features?

Title, table of contents, headings, subheadings, index, glossary, bold print, captions, photographs, labeled diagrams, charts, graphs, tables, maps and timelines. Most published lists include all of these; the differences between lists are mostly at the edges.

What is the difference between text features and text structure?

Text features are visible elements you can point at without reading — headings, captions, diagrams. Text structure is the pattern the ideas are arranged in, such as chronology, comparison, or cause and effect, and you have to read to identify it. Features answer “where is the information?”; structure answers “how are the ideas related?”

What grade do students learn text features?

In the Common Core standards, explicit text-features instruction runs from grade 1 to grade 3, after kindergarten covers the basic parts of a book. From grade 4 the same standard number moves on to text structure, though visual and digital features continue to appear under other standards.

Do fiction books have text features?

Yes, just fewer of them. Fiction commonly uses titles, chapter titles, illustrations and a table of contents, and fantasy and adventure novels often include maps and family trees. What fiction rarely has is the navigation set — index, glossary, bold key terms and labeled diagrams.

Are hyperlinks and menus text features?

Yes. The US standards name “electronic menus, icons” in the grade 1 and 2 standards and “key words, sidebars, hyperlinks” in grade 3, so digital features are part of the expectation rather than an optional extra.

What are the parts of a book?

For young readers this usually means the front cover, back cover, title page, spine, and the author and illustrator names. Kindergarten students are expected to identify the front cover, back cover and title page — this comes before named text features and is the foundation they build on.

The Bottom Line

Text features are the parts of a text that help you find and understand information without reading all of it. There are roughly twenty in common use, they split usefully into directional, supplementary and visual groups, and the digital ones now matter as much as the printed ones.

The thing worth holding onto, whether you are teaching this or learning it: the goal was never to name them. The standards ask students to locate information efficiently. Features are the tools for that, and a reader who uses an index well has understood them better than one who can list all twenty.