Non-Fiction Reading

Last week I started a new unit on reading non-fiction. My students love listening to me read nonfiction to them, but I rarely see them pick up a nonfiction book and read it themselves.

I am hoping that  exposing them to many different topics and types of nonfiction will pique their interest and encourage them to pick up a nonfiction book.

We started by charting the characteristics of both fiction and nonfiction.  At first they were kind of stuck on real/non real, so it took a bit of prompting to get them to think beyond that.  Once they got going they were able to come up with many characteristics.

The following day we brainstormed different forms of non-fiction texts.  Again, they got stuck on the basics, and kept naming different types of books (a book about whales, a book about Texas....) .  It took some prompting to get them to realize that nonfiction writing is found in so many things we see everyday, not just books.  

We made this chart listing different types of nonfiction texts, and I added some visuals so they could see examples of the different items we brainstormed.

My class is now more excited to read nonfiction, after seeing all the different types of nonfiction there is.

Next we will be talking about nonfiction text features and then moving into main idea and details.

Do you have any favorite resources for teaching nonfiction reading?