Nonfiction Matters!

I'll let you in on a little secret about me. I absolutely love teaching nonfiction. I'll let you in on a second secret about me, I didn't really have any feelings towards nonfiction until last year. My action research project for my Masters program revolved solely around the importance of nonfiction in the elementary classroom. After reading gobs and gobs (gobs x 100) of research on nonficion, I quickly grew to love it.

After our Jaguar unit, I wanted to dip into nonfiction a bit. So, guess what? We did. Have you heard of Stephanie Harvey? Most of you probably have, you may even own this book --

Well, I used Harvey's book Nonfiction Matters to develop a little quick review on nonfiction for my kids. Here's an overview of what we did.

Day one: Anchor Chart! Woot woot. I love anchor charts too. We answered the age old question, "Why do we read nonfiction?"According to Harvey, here are some stellar reasons WHY we actually read nonfiction:

Yes, I spelled acquire wrong. Whoops!

Day Two: We tackled those pesky expository text structures. Harvey suggested using an example of "goosebumps" for each text structure. As a class, we created a foldable and labeled each type of text structure. Then, inside the flap, students wrote down and illustrated an example of the text structure with goosebumps. Make sense? Not quite? Okay, let me back up.

For example, one expository text structure is cause and effect. We wrote the follow example:
"The temperature dropped to 45 degrees. I got goosebumps." This is an example of cause and effect. Harvey lists an example of each structure relating it back to goosebumps. It was an excellent illustration of the different ways nonfiction can be written.

NEXT time, I would like to start the year off with this activity. First, we can identify WHY we read nonfiction and the various text structures. Then, the next day, compare reading nonfiction to fiction! We can answer the question of why we read fiction and compare how fiction stories are set up much differently. I'm getting all tingly on the inside just thinking about it. Stop me before I get too nerdy.

Sounds like I've got a week planned for the fall!

What exciting nonfiction lessons do you do with your kiddos?