Students have become quite aware of the types of texts they encounter in the classroom and whether they are fiction or nonfiction. One student is so interested right now in nonfiction books that she recently said, "I just want to put all my pretend--I mean, fiction, books away and just read nonfiction books so I can learn about things." She summarized the difference between the two text types so perfectly. Though, I encourage students to read all types of texts, and we've had conversations about why one would sometimes read fiction and sometimes read nonfiction. Authors have specific purposes for writing the texts they write, just as we have specific purposes for reading them--sometimes we want to learn, and sometimes we're reading purely for entertainment. And the two purposes intersect quite a lot, actually. Recently, our lessons have focused on using the visual information in nonfiction books to help us learn. We have been studying the maps, photographs, close-ups, diagrams, captions, and other features of many nonfiction texts. Students have discovered that they can learn a lot through these elements of nonfiction books, even if they cannot yet read all of the words. | This student was eager to share all she learned about jaguars, just by carefully studying the photographs. |