Nonfiction Text

When we returned from the Winter Break, we began a unit on Nonfiction Text. This type of writing makes the students look at nonfiction books differently and as a result their report writing changes. During Reader's Workshop we shared nonfiction books with the class. Each day we focused on another convention that could be found. Together as a class we made a large Convention Notebook and the students made their own book during book clubs. The conventions we learned about are: Table of Contents, photographs, captions, drawings, labels, close ups, cutaways, maps , charts, types of print and glossary.

The students used this new knowledge about nonfiction text to write reports on the Solar System. The students used a Table of Contents to help the reader find a certain planet. They included captions and labels about their pictures they illustrated. Many students also used different types of print to emphasize the name of each planet. The new conventions they learned about deepened their writing.