Help students understand the differences between fiction vs nonfiction texts. These teaching ideas & activities are perfect for making an anchor chart as your students are learning to distinguish between fiction and nonfiction.
Hello Friend!
A lot has changed in the classroom since the implementation of the Common Core Standards. While I may not love all of the changes, one shift I do think is positive is the greater emphasis on reading and writing informational texts. In the past, 80% of the texts read in class were fiction. Now, the Common Core Standards aim for reading materials to be 50% fiction and 50% nonfiction.
I love sharing informational texts with my students because it is an easy way for me to connect with them and share in their interests. There is great excitement in the air when together we can learn new information and build our background knowledge.
Today I’m eager to share with you the day-to-day details and resources I used to teach my nonfiction unit! So let’s get started!
How I Teach Fiction Vs. Non-Fiction
I begin the unit I make sure my students understand what makes a text fiction or nonfiction. After modeling how I know, students turn and talk to a partner to explain how they know the text type. I then add these posters to our focus wall.
Videos to Teach Fiction vs. Non-Fiction
These videos are an engaging way to dive into the topic!
Harry Kindergarten is always a favorite!
How to Teach Non-Fiction Text Features
On Day 2 my plan was to teach the features of nonfiction texts. I asked my students, “What are text features?” I looked out and saw blank stares…heard nothing but crickets….But don’t worry, this actually excited me! I love when no one already knows what I am about to teach. 🙂
Prior to this mini lesson I made this anchor chart with just the text features pasted on.
I shrunk the posters down and printed 4 to a page. I did not prewrite the post-its on the poster, instead my students and I created the notes together as we discovered, discussed, and determined each text feature’s purpose.
It took 4 mini lessons to determine what these text features were and to understand how they help us while reading nonfiction texts. I hung our anchor chart in a low space that was accessible to my students while working in the classroom.
I also printed the text feature posters out and put them on a ring. The ring hung on my whiteboard in the front of my classroom so students could easily access then at anytime.
Comparing Fiction and Non-Fiction
Now that my readers had a good foundation of identifying nonfiction books and text features, we moved on to comparing fiction to nonfiction texts. These two familiar books on butterflies were perfect to use as examples of each text type.
In first grade students must be able to explain major differences between fiction and nonfiction texts. To support them I premade the beginning of our anchor chart to compare texts. As my students discovered the differences between the butterfly texts, we filled out the chart together.
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| Get these FICTION VS NONFICTION printables here |
Later they sorted the attributes on their own chart.
I used this printable in a literacy center. It also served as a great resource for having them share their thinking with a partner.
This printable made a good assessment that I shared with parents at conferences.
I recognize prepping these materials can take A LOT of time! That’s why I’ve created resources to help you. These three resources for teaching about non-fiction are ready to print and teach! Grab them below!
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Fiction and Nonfiction Activities BundleProduct on sale$7.00 -
Nonfiction Text Features – anchor chart posters & worksheets$5.00 -
Comparing Fiction and Nonfiction$3.75
Looking for more ways to teach your students about informational texts? Take a look at this post where I share 5 tips for How to Teach Informative Writing and provide details about the Informational Writing Mini-Unit resources I have created for Kindergarten, 1st and 2nd grade students.
Learning about informational texts is so important for our students. I hope these resources will help make it fun and easy for you to teach your students about the genre. When we give our students plenty of opportunities to read and write non-fiction in their younger years, we are setting them to successfully tackle the content-specific texts they will encounter in their later years!
Thanks for reading,
I was wondering where I can get the posters you used to show the basic difference between fiction and nonfiction (the first 2 pictures on the page). I love them and want to print them for my classroom! Thanks, Jenny
Hi Jenny, they are in the Comparing Fiction and Nonfiction linked above! Happy Teaching 🙂
Hi,
Where can I download your comparing fiction to non-fiction cut and paste. You show it with white paper and the cut outs on green.
You can get the resource here
https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Comparing-Fiction-and-Nonfiction-Fiction-vs-Nonfiction-2452702
Hi Stacey, The sorting activity is party of my Comparing Fiction and Nonfiction resource. You can access the resource in my Tpt shop by clicking the link or the image right above. Happy Teaching! Christina
It really helped me with my Pre-K class! Great info, thankss 🙂
Great teaching ideas! Keep up the good work!
Awesome ideas and resources can’t wait to teach this topic the next few weeks. Just what I needed thank you!
Happy 2018 wishes!
A wonderful resource for ideas and my children made wonderful connections, the message became clear to them very easily and they thoroughly enjoyed it.
I’ve been using this since last couple of years and just what I look out for when I’m teaching this unit.
It just fits in
Thank you 🙂
So glad these resources are helpful for you and your students!
OMG!!! totally amazing. Can’t wait to use some of these resources with my students. Thank you so much.
Glad this is helpful Maria!
You are welcome Maria!
ii love this page it has helped me to better engage my students in the lesson and they were able to discover some of the information on their own.
awesome, thanks!!
Wondrful Christina Thanks a loooooooot for amazing sharing
You are very welcome Noureen!
Hello! I bought this on your TPT. Thank you – it’s wonderful! I’m creating a lesson plan around it (currently in school earning my teaching degree) but I’m not sure what to do for a quick closing. Any ideas? Thanks!!
Hey Jess!
Thanks for your sweet feedback! Could you give students an extension activity or assessment as a closing for the unit?
🙂 Christina
Those are both great ideas – thank you SO much! 🙂
Hi. I am planing a lesson for non-fiction vs fiction since I do think that is an important lesson to do before jumping straight into non-fiction. I am doing this for a class and of course we need to put a standard with each lesson. However I am having hard time identifying which standard this lesson could fall under. Could you identify which common core standard this lesson plan would fall under?
Hi Destiny,
CCSS RL.2.5
Describe the overall structure of a story, including describing how the beginning introduces the story and the ending concludes the action.
CCSS RL.1.5
Explain major differences between books that tell stories and books that give information, drawing on a wide reading of a range of text types.
CCSS RL.K.5
Recognize common types of texts (e.g., storybooks, poems).
Hope this is helpful! -Christina
This post was truly worthwhile to read. I wanted to say thank you for the key points you have pointed out as they are enlightening.
You are very welcome Richard, thanks for connecting with me! -Christina