A Little More Nonfiction Fun!!

My students and I have now wrapped up our nonfiction unit! They learned so much and have become such in depth thinkers! I LOVE to hear their connections to what they are reading and the conversations that are going on in my classroom. I love that my students have meet the challenge to a more rigorous curriculum and are having meaningful interactions with text. I AM ONE HAPPY TEACHER!!! 

A super fun activity that  my students adored was an interview. As a class, we reviewed how to write a question and modeled our questions around those that were found in the biographies that they had read and Internet resources that they had used to complete research on an American President. We created a flip chart with several questions that they had created. 

Once the questions were written, we talked about how to organize our paper. We reviewed many biographies to create an organizer where they could write questions to ask their friend. The kiddos decided that they would use these questions as subtitles in their writing to help their readers find and understand information about their classmates. I was so impressed with them and totally got the teacher goose bumps as they took over the conversation about their books...they truly applied their knowledge!!

Once the class made plans for organizing their writing, they had the choice to use this organizer or to create this in their writer's notebook.

Once the class had made plans for organizing their writing, they used the following form to write their final rough draft on the following form:

These turned out wonderful and the kids had the best time writing them and sharing their writing with their classmates. One of the best parts of this assignment were the "photographs" that they drew of their friends in the text box provided in the final draft form. They were so adorable!!!

Hope you enjoy this! 

We have started with poetry and all I can say is.....SO MUCH FUN!!!

I will post more about that very soon!! :)

Nonfiction Note Taking and Writing

This past nine weeks, my little darlings had a WONDERFUL time exploring the world of nonfiction reading and writing. We have a great textbook adoption that has a variety of nonfiction selections. Has we moved our way through this super exciting genre, I thought it would be a great opportunity to for my students to begin note taking to help keep track of the important details. Here are a couple of graphic organizers that we used to jot down our thoughts:

Note Taking Form

 

Nonfiction Circle Map

 The kiddos read their stories and others that complimented the given topics (weather books, biographies on African American inventors and U.S. Presidents) and then took notes or added to the notes that they had already gathered. This made for an awesome prewriting activity as well!! Before the students used their notes to write their 5 page books, they worked with a partner and shared their notes verbally with them....retelling what they had read as they were planning their books!!

My little ones then used this stationary:

to write about their topics.My students also used this page to create their table of contents with the corresponding page number.

The next step to our fabulous 5 page books was to make a cover that included our title, cover illustration and author's name. On the inside cover, the kiddos wrote a dedication, publishing information and a copyright date.

Then, it was time to share our hard work with our classmates! They were so proud of their books and learned so much along the way!