Author Barbara Pinto shares five key instructional strategies and tips for incorporating nonfiction into your K-1 curriculum!
What basic instructional strategies give you mileage during nonfiction reading workshop time? How do you start? How do you construct a meaningful reading time? Here are five tips to get you started, and keep you going!
INSTRUCTIONAL STRATEGIES FOR NONFICTION READING TIME
1. Allow Time for Exploration of Books and Materials
• Emphasize information in illustrations.
• Allow multiple days for browsing.
• Compare books on the same topic.
• Expand the definition of reading sources (see the list of sources below, highlighted in blue): Collect magazines, photographs (add writing on them!), food wrappers, advertisements, brochures, toddler books, Web site printouts, and any other related and informative sources.
- Sources of Information Text in Daily Life:
- Concept Books: Concepts such as shapes, opposites, signs, and food
are represented in these basic texts.
Environmental Print: Words in the world teach names for things and
places—from the bus stop sign to the milk carton.
Media and Print in the World: Children are exposed to many forms of
information, such as movie posters and articles in children's magazines
and newspapers.
Web Sites, Blogs, and Online Newsletters: Internet sources are
increasingly popular sources for information.
Brochures and Pamphlets: At the zoo and other cultural spots, plaques
and signs teach about the places they represent.
Literary nonfiction: Stories may contain nonfiction content. Though they
have plots and characters, we learn facts from books, such as Snail's Spell
by Joanna Ryder and Stellaluna by Janell Cannon. - Concept Books: Concepts such as shapes, opposites, signs, and food
2. Encourage Student Talk (Model Behaviors You Want Students to Develop)
• Words and pictures are both sources of information:
- Point and name details.
- Discuss meaning.
• Talk with a partner:
• Talk in general ways about what is interesting:
- This is really cool because...
• Use prompts to encourage discussion. Students rely on pictures to start conversation:
So I can learn that _____ (birds climb or fly).
So I think _____ (birds like to be in trees).
And I wonder _____ (where else do birds go)?
• Use simple notations on sticky notes to create a place to stop and talk:
- ! A surprising fact or idea
- F a new fact
- √ Something I like
• Compare sources; use differences to dig deeper and think:
But this book says _____.
That makes me think _____ because _____.
3. Model by Thinking Aloud
• Use big books and read-alouds to teach nonfiction strategies.
4. Use Genre-Specific Language to Differentiate Fiction from Nonfiction
• Nonfiction: When talking about a nonfiction essay, text, or passage, I ask, "What can you LEARN"? "What did this TEACH you?" or "Tell me about the INFORMATION in this text."
5. Allow a Buzz in the Room: Reading Voices
This excerpt is fromTeaching Real-Life Nonfiction Reading Skills in the K-1 Classroom, by literacy expert Barbara Pinto. In her book, Barbara shares her best lessons for teaching key nonfiction reading skills and strategies to our youngest students. Fun, engaging, and developmentally appropriate, these activities build vocabulary and background knowledge as students ask questions about texts, explore text features, compare and contrast information, identify main ideas and key details, categorize information, and so much more!
Barbara S. Pinto has worked as a teacher of early childhood education and held other educational functions for the past thirty years. She has taught pre-school, Kindergarten, first and second grade, with the bulk of her experience in Grade One. For the past eight years, she has been a Literacy Coach, mentor and educational consultant. She has co-written curricula materials for the NYC Department of Education, and worked at Random House School Division. Teachers College Reading and Writing Project was a large part of her training, and she contributed to ‘think tanks’ and taught summer institutes there. Barbara resides in New York City with her husband, where she raised two sons who still live in the Metropolitan area.
