NonFiction Text Features

I like to teach NonFiction Text Structures and NonFiction Text Features fairly close together-we spend a lot of time talking about nonfiction when I do! (Although my Guided Reading groups do get into it a little earlier-well, a lot-I talk about it with them in September! :)

Since we had just finished up talking about text structures, I thought it would be a perfect time to introduce them to text features.

This is a chart from a few years ago. But I folded it up and revealed them one by one to talk about it. I don't save many charts-but this one took a TON of time to do. Plus, my kids really surprised me with their knowledge of the text features!

After discussing it, I gave them a Scholastic News-which is perfect for short, nonfiction text.

I had them label all the text features that they noticed.

And then, to tie it into the text structures, I had them write me a paragraph for each 'article' saying what they thought the text structure was and why.

The next day, we added in the text features entries to our notebooks (we use Nicole Shelby's stuff).

I made some modifications to have my students get a little more information out of it, and have their notebooks as a better resource.

After spending some more time with some visual reminders, I decided on a fun way to assess them-as well as sneak in some information writing!

While the kids were at special, I created an example to show them what I wanted them to do.

I had italicized, glossary, sidebar, heading, picture and caption

They were to create their own informational paragraph, and showcase at least 5 different text features. I told them they could do 5-6 different ones and showed them the examples on mine.

I had pulled some quick read science books (easy reads for most of my kids).

They each picked a book and got right to work (and OMG, they were so quite and on task (for the most part :) for almost an hour!)

Some friends (who are not 'idea' writers) needed some help with their paragraph planning, so I had them tell me what they wanted to include, and I wrote notes for them.

I starred the ones for this friend that needed to be done first

This way, they had a plan of what they wanted to include written down, but they still needed to write out their sentences and add in their text features. It worked pretty well! (For those who wanted help...I had some who could have used my help but chose not to take it :( )

These turned out pretty well! I love how each example is a reflection of the student. :)

This is definitely something I'll do again...now to brainstorm other ways to do similar things... ;)


Smiles and Sunshine,
Kaitlyn