Non-Fiction Text Features

A broad experience with a variety of stories, informational books, and poetry is fundamental to children's continuing growth in reading and writing.

- Martinez & Teale (1988)

During small group lessons, we have been reading non-fiction books and noticing the different features they have. We found lots of features that help us learn information. As a group we created a list of all the different text features we found. We also found out that not all non-fiction books have each feature in it, the author chooses which feature they want to use.

We used this information to then make our own non-fiction books about animals from our animal inquiry. We have been wondering about these animals and learning lots of information. This small group gathered information and put it into a book to teach the rest of the class.

Students worked in pairs to brainstorm information about their animal (giraffe, polar bear and squirrel).

They then began to add the information into a book, using some text features we learned about.

It was so wonderful to watch the students eagerly search out new information or share what they already knew. They talked with their partner to share ideas about organizing their information and what needed to be in the table of contents. We were so impressed with their conversations, research skills, writing skills and imaginations that we thought we would share their books. We hope you learn something from these books, we know we sure have!

All About Giraffes by J.C.

All About Giraffes by D.M.

All About Squirrels by A.A.

All About Giraffes by A.R.

All About Polar Bears by I.D.

All About Polar Bears by L.L.

All About Squirrels by A.R.