What's this non-fiction all about?

Today begins a month-long unit on non-fiction. I believe that in order to best understand non-fiction, readers must learn to decode its structure and use its features efficiently. So we begin here. For our introductory lesson, I collect examples of non-fiction texts from the classroom. Of course you could go to a library and collect all sorts of examples. However, I like to pick from within the classroom so that perhaps some students are familiar already with the texts I choose. They won’t be reading texts today - just using them to explore.

I set a dozen or so books on each table and instruct students to get out their reading notebooks. Their job today is to flip through the books and make observational notes of what they find. This works well if it follows a unit on fiction as you can ask them to notice how these texts are different from fiction texts. Even if you haven’t completed a fiction unit, you can still ask students to be on the look out for how these books are different from the chapter or picture books they’ve been reading. Another option would be to set out two piles of books - one non-fiction and one fiction. Ask students to contrast the books making notes on how they are different.

I try to give them as little direction as possible so that they are conducting a true inquiry. I don’t want them to notice that non-fiction texts include subheadings or maps simply because I’ve pointed these out to them. I want to see what they discover on their own. Once they have their materials, I give them 20 - 30 to work with their tables.

After their work time, I call the class to our meeting area to talk about what they’ve discovered. I take notes on the white board or chart paper while they tell me specific examples from their texts. I try to get them to see commonalities between texts such as if one student mentions that she found a chart in her book, I’ll ask if others noticed charts in their books, etc. We spend some time doing this trying to find as many similarities between texts as possible. This conversation serves as a springboard when introducing specific text features later in the unit.