Inside This Week’s Episode: Most of what we read in our daily life is nonfiction - street signs, dinner recipes, news articles, etc. So -let’s teach our students these critical reading nonfiction reading skills that will help them in the classroom and beyond!

Teachers spend so.much.time on teaching fiction Reading skills & Strategies.

But the reality is - most of our life is spent reading nonfiction text. Whether it’s a dinner recipe or a manual to try to fix the TV remote control settings that your toddler screwed up (again!) — nonfiction reading skills are not just needed for the classroom, but REAL life!

We should be spending an equal amount of time on nonfiction reading skills & strategies as we do fiction.

Because we read nonfiction texts differently than we do fiction, it’s a mistake to assume that what we teach about fictional stories will naturally translate into nonfiction. These critical reading skills must be explicitly taught, modeled and practiced.

If you’re looking for simple, yet fun ways to teach your students to effectively read nonfiction, then check out these 5 must-try ideas that come straight from my elementary classroom to yours!

Transition Header into Snapshot notes

Here’s a Snapshot:

• [00:32] We read nonfiction all day, every day. Teaching students to read nonfiction texts effectively, whether that's in a book or just in their everyday life, is a reading beast all on its own. Because of this, teachers need to provide students with specific and clear reading strategies to help students navigate texts.

• [02:22] Begin by teaching students to notice and look for nonfiction text features - features like bold words, headings, graphs and the like. These features help draw our attention to important information and by teaching students to use these features, we will help them make sense of the text. I’m sharing a 3-step formula filled with awesome reading activities for helping students become nonfiction text feature masters!

• [5:41] Another important element to teaching nonfiction is to help your students to start identify the text structure of the text itself. This will help students take a unique approach to each text structure to best understand the information. I’ll go over some simple reading activities that will give your students practice with identifying text structure.

• [12:41] Since reading nonfiction texts require a different set of skills, its also important to teach students how to apply reading comprehension strategies to nonfiction texts. Make simply tweaks in the language you use around reading comprehension strategies to help students make this shift - I’ll show you how!

• [14:17] Nonfiction text instruction is a great time to teach students about fact and opinion. Learn some simple activities to help students look for facts and opinions inside of nonfiction texts.

• [15:40] Allow students to compile everything that they have learned about nonfiction texts in a student-created nonfiction reading guide. Here students can showcase their learning as well as create a reference guide that can be used year-round. I’ll share what exactly goes into my own nonfiction reading guide.

Links & Resources Mentioned in the Episode

Podcast Episodes for the Reading Comprehension Strategies:

• EPISODE 41: Teaching Reading Comprehension Strategies

• EPISODE 42: Reading Comprehension Instruction: How to Teach Making Connections

• EPISODE 47: Reading Comprehension Strategies: How to Teach Visualizing

• EPISODE 51: Reading Comprehension Strategies: How to Teach Making Predictions

• EPISODE 59: A Step-By-Step Guide to Teaching Determining Importance in the Upper Elementary Classroom

• EPISODE 64: Helping Your Students Make Inferences When They Read

POST: 3 Easy Steps For Teaching Students to Use Nonfiction Text Features

BOOK: Recycle! by Gail Gibbons

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