Welcome back! I'm glad you're reading along and I hope you find a thing or two that you can use in your room!

This post goes right along with my two previous ones. I've been hitting nonfiction text pretty hard since after the holidays. I started off by making sure the kids know what nonfiction text features are and how they benifit the reader. I talk all about that in the previous two posts. Here is a picture of the nonfiction text features I cover.



When I'm sure the kids are all settled in and feel comfortable with the text features I move into nonfiction summaries. We covered fiction summarization in the beginning of the year and I knew that nonfiction was going to look a lot different and be much more challenging for them. I made this sassy graphic organizer to help with that. I only have a picture here because I can't seem to located it in my files. UGH! I will find it though and put it up for all of you to use if you wish! (Promise)
I explain to the students that we focus on the title, pictures, and the first section to get our opening sentence. We then divide the article by sections using the headings. We give one sentence summarizing each section and add it to our organizer.
After we finish up the chart organizer we wrap it up and put in into a neat nice paragraph. I take this time to talk about grammar. I also talk about not wording our summary sentences the same as the author did in the original article. I tossed it all together and threw it on our bulliten board.


The kids are really getting good at summarizing. I think this skill will be a great resource to them as they get into the upper grade where they have to read and pick information out of text books on a regular basis.

On my last post I mentioned a student magazine that I use to teach nonfiction. Well, I failed to mention what magazine that was. Oops! I've been getting this amazing magazine for the past two years and I use it for all kinds of things. It has awesome eye catching articles that go right with many science/social studies GLCEs. The magazine comes in different reading levels. The articles essentially stay the same. Both levels have an article about rock climbing with the same pictures. The lower level has larger print and easier to read text. I can then differentiate and have higher readers being challenged while my lower readers are not threatened. Click on the picture below to see what they offer online for students and teachers.

I've been so very busy with lots of fun projects and I thought I would get myself in gear and start sharing!! I've hit nonfiction text features pretty hard since Jan. I used these adorable posters which I found on TpT!! Go Lesson Plan SOS! I've been MIA but I love you two and all your sassy lessons!! These posters are colorful and the kids stayed engaged with the lesson.

 I introduced 3-4 features a day using these posters. We were holding our snazzy magazines (Which I love!!) and we went on a little scavenger hunt. I would introduce captions and the kids would hunt for one and then we would discuss captions and so on. As the kids became more independent and familiar with nonfiction features I introduced this sassy graphic organizer!





I took this organizer and put my own words in. I put things like find 3 captions and tell what page, find 2 pictures and tell their purpose, find 1 bold word and tell its definition etc. I then set the kids loose with their magazines to hunt for nonfiction text features. We would gather back and share.

I hope you enjoyed this little segment of nonfiction text features!! I have more to come so stay tuned!
Leave a comment if you have any ideas to add, suggestions, thoughts, etc..

Cool huh!?