Late November-December
This time of year provides students with an opportunity to investigate a variety of non fiction texts. We begin the unit by exploring different nonfiction books that interest the students, while taking time to notice the text's overall structure. This includes paying extra attention to the table of contents, headings, subheadings, and text features. As the students become more familiar with the structure of nonfiction, they move toward more in depth thinking by pulling out the main idea of an article or section of a book. Students also learn to support their main idea with evidence from the text by creating boxes (the main idea) and bullets (the evidence) as they read. Once they become experts on particular topics, they then have the opportunity to share their new discoveries by teaching a peer about what they read. Students also spend time in this unit reading a different kind of nonfiction text - narrative nonfiction. Narrative nonfiction reads like a story; it includes a setting, plot, and characters which allow the students to get lost in the text. As students read different narrative nonfiction articles, they are able to put their character skills (from Unit 2) to work by discovering how the characters' motivations and struggles contribute to the main idea. |