Today, I am here to share one of my biggest passions, reading in the classroom! I love to get kids reading! This week, we are focused on Non-Fiction Reading which is my favorite! I love watching kids learn things that they never knew before. I love to make non-fiction reading as fun as possible!
When teaching non-fiction, I always focus on text features first! I mean come on, my friends, how can they read if they can’t use the tools?!?! One of my favorite activities, will always be a text feature scavenger hunt! This year, I hid books all around the classroom After I taught a text feature, I would have them run and find a book and try to find that text feature as fast as they could. They had a RIOT! Grab this text feature scavenger hunt FREEBIE!
Another SUPER DUPER fun activity was looking at news articles for text features. I started by putting news articles under their desks. Image the surprise when I told them to reach under the desk to start the activity. They laughed, giggled, and awed. I was actually having my observation this time and my principal LOVED this idea! The students then had to highlight their text features and then discussed with partners the importance of their text features.
During our stations, the kiddos worked on some amazing apps that are free! These apps and sites helped my children identify, read, and use text features.
One thing that I love to do is create books that students can read in the classroom and then take home. My kids love taking their books home and sharing them with their favorite people. I can remember a student saying, “I taught my Mom all about Harriet Tubman, she knew nothing before me”. I mean I am sure that Mom knew something before her child, but the fact that the kid was teaching his parents is EPIC!
We use Mini Readers in my classroom for small group reading and whole group reading. My FAVORITE thing to do is assign a group a mini readers on a person and have them teach the class. They read the mini readers, they scan some QR codes, and they make a presentation. Sometimes we use a powerpoint, posters, or skits. The possibilities are ENDLESS, my friends. Check out mini readers here!
I hope that you can add some of these ideas into your non-fiction unit! I am so appreciative for you stopping by and joining in on my blog launch that I want to give you one of the readers for free!
Hannah, I absolutely loved your post! So many creative ideas for making teaching about Text Features so much fun… Loved the idea of taping articles underneath the students desk, that alone will have my students engaged. Thanks so much for sharing… I look forward to following your blog!
:0) Melissa
Thank you so much for your kind comments! I like any fun way to put a twist on things! Lol!
Thanks for following along!