Creating Their OWN Book of Non-fiction Features and a Freebie

Non-fiction may be one of my favorite things to teach all year!

Students just happen to get so engaged and absorbed in non-fiction that it drives my teacher heart to want to teach more and more of it!

Each year, we start off by identifying the features and making a class chart. 

You can find all the parts I use for our anchor chart by clicking on the picture below.

It will take you to my TpT store where you can download them for FREE!

This anchor charts hangs by our guided reading area. We refer to it often throughout the year when we are reading non-fiction in our groups.

After learning about the features, we went through our book boxes and labeled some features we found with sticky notes. 

This student found a photograph and an illustration.

Another fun activity we love to do is similar, except I hang posters around the room. Each poster has the name of a feature on it. Students hunt through their books again. When they find a feature, they write down the page number it was on and go and stick it to the poster. 

We also make our own book of non-fiction features. I just take a few pieces of manila and add a cover.

Here is an example of one student's book.

Each student glued in their own photograph and wrote their own caption about their photo. 

We do something similar to this for each feature.

After we have added them all, they can't wait to take them home!

Non-fiction and New Learning

Our focus in reading the past 2 weeks has been identifying non-fiction features, their purpose and reading LOTS of non-fiction text. I love teaching non-fiction in October because there are so many great "themed" things you can pull in during this time.

I began reading my firsties ONE single book about Bats.

Ummm...1 book and they were hooked.

I knew since I found something they were interested in that we were completely and wholeheartedly diving in! 

I put my class into small groups (each with a strong reader) and had them read a short non-fiction book on bats. Look at those cuties! They were SO into it! 

Next, they had to discuss and record 4 new facts they learned from the text.

 Instead of recording on sticky notes or paper, as we usually do, we recorded our learning on GIANT bats!

Little did they knew, their interest sparked an interest in their teacher as well!

Operation transform the classroom into a Bat Cave takes place tomorrow.

Check back for more about that SOON!

Read all about our classroom transformation into a bat cave HERE.

Focusing on Non-Fiction

It seems as though this year lends itself for the PERFECT time to teach Non-Fiction!

 To this point in the year we have read plenty of fiction books. 

So when introducing a new "genre" of books, the kiddos are enthralled!

To kick off our unit we watch a Brainpop on fiction vs. nonfiction.

We create these anchor charts together. 

And then we take a look at a few books from our class library and sort them to go with our charts.

Each day over the past week we learned one or two new features that we see in non-fiction books.

We created this chart with each feature, an example and its purpose.

It will hang in our room all year long.

I was thinking of a way to have my kiddos kind of show me what they learned when I came across the perfect idea from Smitten with First! It's like my friend just read my mind and gave me just what I needed.

So using her idea, I wrote the name of each feature on a different color paper and hung them around the room while the students hunted through their Kids Time Magazine to hunt for the features.

Once they found a feature, they wrote that page number on a sticky note and went to place it on the paper.

It was a great way to get my little firsties working while getting up and moving at the same time!

This is definitely an activity I will be incorporating into our non-fiction study every year.

Check back shortly for more ideas in our non-fiction study!

Fiction or Non-Fiction?

When teaching what type of books are fiction and which are non-fiction, my brain always has to stop and think about which is which. 

How come people who name things can't make them easy to remember?

Shouldn't non-fiction be NOT real?

Firsties would catch on SO much quicker that way, but since it's not here's what we've been doing.

We started off by making these 2 anchor charts together.

We sorted the different pictures after discovering the 2 types of books after looking at a pile of each and sorting them according to what, yes, BrainPop had told us to look for.

Each day we focused on a different feature and added it to our non-fiction feature chart.

I would show them examples from a non-fiction book I would read.

Then in partners, they would use a non-fiction book to find a feature in their books.

Last week was Bat Week so we did a little searching through non-fiction books about bats to record what we had learned from the features in the book.

Teaching non-fiction is definitely one of my most favorite things!

The kids are always so engaged and proud when they learn lots of facts about one certain thing.

Next up, pumpkins!