How much nonfiction do your students read?

Teaching nonfiction can be difficult; it relies on background knowledge that some students may not have, and because it contains different types of features, it reads differently than fiction. Kids can learn to navigate nonfiction. Here are some resources that might help.

Nicki Clausen-Grace and Michelle Kelley, two educators, offer up a great teaching tip for helping students navigate features of nonfiction text that students might overlook. Teachers help students brainstorm a list of text features that exist in nonfiction. These might include headings, pictures, captions, maps. A bulletin board is divided into sections, and using magazines, newspapers, and other print resources, students cut out and mount the examples into the correct area on the mural. See our related article: Guiding Students Through Expository Text with Text Feature Walks by Clausen-Grace and Kelley.

A similar idea from Classroom 2.0 uses text mapping — a scroll made from several pages of the book glued together. Students in going on a “treasure hunt” in search of text features. Features are highlighted and labeled. Scrolls help students see the text in its entirety and can be marked up depending on your instructional focus. You can find more resources from the Text Mapping Project.

About the Author

Joanne Meier has more than 20 years of experience in the field of education, including serving on the faculty at the University of Virginia for six years where she trained reading specialists and future classroom teachers. Dr. Meier was Reading Rockets’ research-to-practice consultant from 2002 to 2014, where she wrote the Page by Page blog — sharing best practices in supporting young readers at home and in the classroom.

Publication Date
July 22, 2010

Related Topics

Comprehension, Content Area Literacy, Struggling Readers
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