With the implementation of the Common Core State Standards comes a long overdue excitement over the non-fiction genre. This category has always been a favorite of mine, and I’m thrilled to see so many new interesting lesson plans and activities designed around informational texts.
Informational texts even have their own section among the Common Core Standards for English Language Arts. Let’s take a look at an example of the 3rd grade standard for informational text.
CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RI.3.7 Use information gained from illustrations (e.g., maps, photographs) and the words in a text to demonstrate understanding of the text (e.g., where, when, why, and how key events occur).
This particular standard is exciting to me for several reasons:
First, children love to learn about subjects they are interested in or feel connected to. As a parent, I watched my boys enter the library when they were young and head straight for their favorite sections: trucks, animals, storms, and paper airplanes. They eventually branched out into other interest: rocks and minerals, endangered species, extreme creatures of the rain forest, well, you get the picture. And so did they, as a matter of fact, most children love to look at illustrations, maps, photographs, and any other visually appealing images the books contained.
And this was extremely engaging for my sons; they would eventually point to the words along the page asking what it said until they were able to read it on their own. To me, it seemed like a logical transition into writing, as well. Once they were nearly bursting with all their new found information, convincing them to draw their own pictures and eventually putting captions and then writing sentences about the topic was a painless activity.
As a teacher, I see the same enthusiasm when students want to learn about an interesting topic. Third grade seems to be a particularly creative year for students. Interest in crafts blossoms. We had a year long near-obsession with origami, for example, that provided wonderful opportunities to guide learning in new directions. This particular craft could be integrated into math, history, art, poetry, and anything you can think of to connect students’ learning.
Nonfiction is also a powerful teaching tool for students who have language-based learning difficulties, like Dyslexia, English Language Learners, as well as students with ADHD. With non-fiction text, whether in books or online, the information is presented in smaller quantities, a variety of formats (pictures, diagrams, maps), and these types of text provide more context clues than other types of text.
But not all non-fiction is quite so easy to distinguish from fiction these days. There are many books written to engage even young readers in a format that promotes reading for many purposes. For even more ideas, pair a nonfiction text with an informational text on the same subject. Big Universe provides a great selection of fiction/non-fiction pairs.
Nonfiction provides exciting opportunities for students, teachers, and parents to foster a love of reading and learning. With the diverse text formats, including web-based, graphic novels, and narrative, it’s easy to find an informational text to suit any child’s interests and reading level. Give non-fiction another look; you’ll be pleasantly surprised by what you find!