Our crew is becoming experts on non-fiction in reading and writing!
As readers, we have read non-fiction books and discovered text features that authors include to help readers learn. We eventually will use these non-fiction text features to create a book about pond life.
For now, we are practicing these non-fiction text features as we read. This week, we focused on captions. The students wrote a caption to describe a photograph. We learned captions need to describe the photograph using facts and true information, as well as be interesting, short, and specific. We also spent some time comparing a table of contents and an index. We learned the table of contents shares the headings and pages numbers, and an index shares specific words in the text along with page numbers.
In writing, our students are learning to write informational text. As a class, we have discovered that informational text is text that teaches facts to readers. The students have been researching a pond life animal, writing facts, and creating their own informational text about the animal they are studying. We have discussed organization and sentence fluency. In the weeks to come, the students will begin adding a topic sentence, conclusion, and supporting details to the informational text they are composing.
