All About Nonfiction Features!!!

Check out the complete unit HERE!

Call me a nerd, but I love, Love, LOVE teaching about Nonfiction Features! It has always been one of my favorite things to teach. Maybe because it brings out the little detectives and/or scientists within the kids?! We had a lot of fun with our Nonfiction Features unit last week so I thought I would share.

To start off the unit, we do the Comprehension Toolkit lesson 2: Notice and Think About Nonfiction Features by Stephanie Harvey. This simply introduces the text features in a fun and engaging way as the kids look at some nonfiction books or magazines and identify different features. Then it goes a little deeper and explains each purpose for the features. I created a Feature/Purpose T-chart on chart paper, while we went through the lesson, as the kids recorded on their own paper. (see below!)

The next day, I partnered the kids up and they chose a nonfiction book to look through to find the different features. They used post-its to label what they found. We came together as a class and shared what we found in our books.

This year it seemed my kids had more background knowledge about Nonfiction Features so we were ready to start our Nonfiction Features Project! The students got to choose whether they wanted to create a poster or a book of nonfiction features.

Here are the directions and a Project Plan I gave the kids before they could start…

I really encouraged the kids to think about a topic they already knew some facts about but still wanted to know more. Of course my kids think they are already experts on their topics but this really allowed them to stop and think. And they LOVED being able to research a little and record their results. I explained that I wanted them to decide based on their research results if they would rather do the poster or the book. I had a pretty even split on books and posters in my class.

Here are some pics of my kids working on their projects!

Starting their books or posters!

They were really into it…didn't even notice me taking pics!

Having fun researching!

And here are some fabulous finished products!!

Since the main objective was to have the kids use and apply the nonfiction features, they were pretty easy to grade. Here are the rubrics I used!

I was really impressed by the kids' work!

After our projects, I had a Nonfiction Feature Scavenger Hunt ready to go!

And then to wrap up the week…we had our assessment. The kids did FABULOUS!!

I have to say that I'm looking forward to teaching this again next year!

Check out this complete unit HERE!

Here is a PREVIEW!

THANKS FOR VISITING!