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Nonfiction
As scholars begin using informational texts, it's important they understand their uses and features. This visual instructional activity has readers match three text titles to corresponding pictures. Next, they examine a book cover with...
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Check it Out...Nonfiction Can Be Fun!
Organizing information gathered for a research topic can be a challenge. Read aloud notes you have collected on a topic and use suggestions offer by the class to categorize and sort this information. Partners then follow this pattern,...
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Research
This research PowerPoint provides questions to consider when selecting a research topic. Emerging writers consider their purpose for writing and the audience they are writing for, and then practice narrowing down a topic given a list of...
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Planning A Vacation Online
If you could travel anywhere in the United States, where would you go? Use this question to interest your fourth, fifth, and sixth graders as they experiment with Mapquest or other direction-based resources. They choose where they'd like...
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Question What You Read
Readers test their reading comprehension after reading a nonfiction text about Paleo Indians. (This text is in Alabama: It's History and Geography, but other texts can be used.) After reading the nonfiction article as a class, they...
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Super Summarizer!!!
Emerging readers summarize a nonfiction text using a five step process. After a brief demonstration of the five-step method for summarizing text, they read a nonfiction article and write their own summary. A checklist of each summary is...
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Genres, Genres Everywhere
Young readers assume the role of Genre Sleuths to investigate the characteristics of folktales, fantasies, and mysteries. For this session you will need to collect a variety of books on a topic you have been studying. Groups then examine...
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Review Parts of a Book
Begin the year with a review of the parts of a book. Exercises in the unit plan ask emergent readers to identify the information on the cover of a book and on the title page, to explain the purpose of a table of contents, and to describe...
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Farm Animals
Why are farm animals important to the community? Expand young farmers' knowledge of furry and feathered friends through stories and a video. There are several books recommended; however, you could use any book about farm animals. A video...
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Elementary Reading: Five Passages with Questions
Five brief readings with questions support practice with various literacy skills. In some cases, learners identify whether underlined words are spelled correctly. Other times, they answer reading comprehension questions about the text or...
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Identifying Features of Nonfiction Text
Learners explore nonfiction text. They identify the cover, title page, and table of contents of a nonfiction book. Pupils work in groups to create a chapter for a nonfiction class book about heroes.
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Using Details from Nonfiction Text to Organize Sequence of Events
Is it important to do things in a certain order? Yes, especially when making a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. Or so your class will learn in a lesson plan on sequencing. After guided practice, class members generate their own “how-to”...
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Narrative Writing
A perfect nonfiction writing activity for the beginning of the year, the Life Line helps you get to know your pupils better and helps the children get to know one another. Later in the year the Star of the Week writing activity...
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Supporting Opinions: Handling the End of a Friendship
Four thought-provoking questions encourage readers to develop and support their opinions about strategies to end a friendship after exploring excerpts from a New York Times article. The reading is brief so this could be a lead-in to...
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Insects
It's a fact: kids love bugs! With this lesson, young learners explore reading informational texts and conducting research while learning about their favorite insects. Spark learners' interest by reading a book about one kind of bug and...
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Let's Learn Library Language
This PowerPoint presentation provides a review of 'library language', vocabulary associated with books and the library such as cover, title, author, illustrator, call number and fiction/nonfiction. Each slide of this PowerPoint displays...
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Reading Comprehension: Fiction and Nonfiction
This resource is made up of a series of reading passages with accompanying questions. On the first page, learners read the definitions of both fiction and non-fiction. They examine four short selections before writing either fiction or...
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An Introduction to Nonfiction
Examine the elements of nonfiction writings in this lesson. Learners list common features of nonfiction and compare nonfiction and fiction books on the same topic. Create a Venn diagram comparing and contrasting the two genres.
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K-W-L Chart
After choosing a topic of interest, young learners use the K-W-L thinking process to create an informational, illustrated, big book. K-W-L, a three-part thinking process, asks the learner to respond to three questions: What do we know...
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The Learning Network: The First Middle School Chess Champs
Introduce some nonfiction reading into your classroom! This resource contains seven comprehension questions pertaining to an article from The New York Times website about the first middle schoolers to ever win the United States Chess...
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The Learning Network: Reactions to Rating Teachers
Meant to be used in connection with the article "In Teacher Ratings, Good Test Scores Are Sometimes Not Good Enough" also available on The New York Times website, this resource provides 12 short-answer writing prompts that ask both basic...
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Student Opinion: How Should Schools Address Bullying?
Spark a disscussion about a current issue, bullying, in your classroom. This resource, published by The New York Times, provides a short article discussing a Anti-Bullying Bill of Rights passed into law in the state New Jersey followed...
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Reading Comprehension- Informational Passages "Pollution"
Practice reading comprehension through this pollution worksheet, which has learners read an informational passage on various aspects of environmental harm. Key terms are in bold, and are used on the next page in the comprehension...
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The Mythology of Munich
Students listen to a story read by their teacher and identify the pictures inside it to be real or make believe. For this fiction and non fiction lesson plan, students also write a real or make believe story of their own.