Sunday, July 21, 2013

Must Read Science Mentor Text- Nonfiction Book for Weather




Hi there!

I realized that a lot of times when I choose a mentor text, it's generally fiction.  With common core, I need to be sure I am incorporating more nonfiction!!

I do think it's more difficult to use a nonfiction text as a mentor text (using the same text all week, finding a mentor sentence, etc.) but it's possible!

I have a great book in my classroom library that I think is a fabulous nonfiction text for our unit on weather!


First off, it's by National Geographic Kids!  I think they do a phenomenal job of using text features and photos to really capture a student's attention!  Here are some of the pages from the inside of the book (courtesy of Amazon):


As you can see, there are text features and facts galore in this book!  Photos, captions, table of contents, index, headings, subheadings, and on and on!

Here is a graphic organizer that I have used when we talk about the importance of nonfiction text features.

Yes, it's plain, but that's ok!  :O)  If you'd like it, you can click the picture of the graphic organizer and download it!  Please leave feedback if you do.  :O)

The way I used this with my class is each student had a nonfiction text.  They worked in partners (they all had the same text) and only used the text features from the book to find facts and information (instead of reading the body of the text).  Then, they filled in the graphic organizer.  They wrote the chapter and page number, the information they learned, and the text feature they used (from the word bank at the top).  This is just one way for them to see how much information they can get even just from the text features.  

So, an example using the book above, maybe in the first chapter, they read a caption and learn that most animals need shelter during a storm and us a hole for shelter.  They would fill this out on the graphic organizer.  They did not have to read anything but the caption to learn this.  That's what I am trying to show them!  You can learn something everywhere, but not only that, they can add captions (or other text features) in THEIR informational writing and give information there, not just in the body of their paper.

If you have any questions or need any clarification, please let me know!  I hope you find this helpful!
Amanda



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Next week's topic- Social Studies


14 comments:

  1. I love how the text features are presented in this particular text. This would be fun for one who may tend to shy away from books. Great graphic organizer too! Thanks.

    Gwen

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  2. Great idea to have them focus on JUST the text features! :) Thanks for hosting each week! xoxo
    Jivey
    ideas by jivey
    Follow me on Facebook!

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  3. It was great to meet you ladies yesterday! Stacia~I hope you are feeling better.

    The pictures in your selection look fabulous. We can always count of National Geographic Kids for a great science book. I love that fat frog, or is he a toad? I don't know...I don't teach science, but I do love for my kiddos to read great science books. Thanks for sharing. :)
    ~Brandee
    Creating Lifelong Learners
    Follow me on Bloglovin'

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  4. I love the National Geographic Kids books, and so do my kiddos. Thanks for sharing how you have them focus on the text features-I love that idea!

    Hunter's Tales from Teaching

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  5. Love National Geographic Kids!
    Thanks for the freebie. (Sometimes, less is more! and cutesy can be distracting!)
    Fabulous Fifth Grade Fun

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  6. I love non-fiction text features-I have a scavenger hunt, but I love the idea of just reading the text features. We talk about the purpose of the features is that they give us information that the text does not. Thanks for hosting and sharing!
    Joanne
    Head Over Heels For Teaching

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  7. I love the colorful illustrations in this book! You are right about the text features, this book is full of them. It's hard to go wrong when the book is from National Geographic for Kids.

    Thank you for the graphic organizer. I'm off to download it.

    Mary

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  8. I love the National Geographic Kids books. I love the magazines too, that is what I use for teaching text features. I rip apart the magazine to make a bulletin board (with the librarians permission of course ;) ). Thanks for hosting this fabulous linky each week!

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  9. Another great books, thanks so much for sharing!!!

    :) Nicole
    Tadpole Tidbits
    www.mrscorbitt.blogspot.com

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  10. I love NG photographs. I really like the in depth ideas you have for this nonfiction text.
    So many great ideas with this linky, thanks again for hosting.
    Hope you had a great meet up this weekend. I'm sorry I missed it. Maybe next year.

    School Is a Happy Place

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  11. What a great way to investigate text features! Students really do find magazines such as these engaging. It is important to teach students to read all the information on the page and are seeing that being assessed more with the Common Core.
    ~Holly
    Fourth Grade Flipper

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  12. Too funny...I've been running Six Traits Sunday with a similar idea. You've gotten a great following, and I love the book titles. Perhaps some would work well for writing too. If so, I'd welcome any/all participation in my linky too since it's a different focus. So glad I found your blog!
    Carla
    Comprehension Connection

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  13. Oh my goodness, your blog is EXACTLY what I've been looking for! A big thank you to Carla for recommending this blog. I am a fourth grade teacher too, and have tried to use mentor texts before, but it is a lot of work going through books to find a specific skill. I am so glad I found your blog with books for skills already picked out! Great blog! Thanks so much, I'm your newest follower!

    Stephanie
    Grooving Through Fourth

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  14. True that when you go for teaching you learn more things with respect to how you actually needs to teach and what in addition to this really need to occupy. literature review services

    ReplyDelete

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