Nonfiction Text

Nonfiction Reading 

The big focus on reading and writing in the coming weeks is nonfiction text. Here are a few lessons we have done in case you wish to support this learning at home!

Summarising

    A big focus has been the ability to concisely summarise what we read. Basically, summarising is being able to explain what is important. When reading, we have been looking at ways to note important ideas using a strategy called BOXES AND BULLETS. The main idea is usually what the whole text is about while the subtopics is a part of the main idea.
    If you notice my awesome hand drawing (ugh!), the goal is for the reader to be able to count off with fingers what a text is about. The hand will come up again and again...if you can't "count off" about what you have read, then you are not summarising concisely.

Important vs. Interesting

Nonfiction is SO much fun to read because the books are full of amazing facts. What we have to ask to ourselves is what facts help us understand the main idea (important)...and what facts are just interesting to know. For example, we don't want to read a text about the impact of mining on our environment and only take away the fact that gold can be found under the sea! 

What POPS out?

We aim to read text that is at a "just right" level. However, when we are reading to learn, we often encounter vocabulary and ideas we have never heard of. That makes reading nonfiction a bit more difficult. Luckily, nonfiction gives us a lot of help. By looking at what "pops out" of a text, we can build our understanding! 

                          

Encourage these reading behaviours when your child is reading at home. A lot of these strategies are no only for nonfiction text but could also be applied to fiction reading too!