Non- Fiction Text Features

As many of us know, kids tend to struggle more with reading and comprehending non-fiction texts as opposed to fiction text. Because of this, we drill and drill and drill non-fiction text-features in second grade. We are finally at that point in the year where it is time to start discussing various text features little by little. I was racking my brain this week with some innovative ways to introduce our first handful of text features. Here is what I came up with:

First, I used these fabulous posters to quickly intro our text features for this week (table of contents, photographs and captions).

(If this is yours please let me know so I can give you credit. I'm not sure where we found these!)

Then we all pulled out our reading books and started looking for these features throughout our story.

Once we found some examples, I broke my kids intro groups of three. Using a post-it note, they had to write the text feature they were given, draw an example of it, and tell how that specific text feature helps us as readers. See our anchor chart below:



In the past I have found that my kids have been really good at identifying each text feature but have a hard time identifying its 'job' (as I call it). This year I'm really pushing for them to be able to understand how to use the text feature. 

Finally, after we have completed the anchor chart together, they will get to fill the corresponding page to their Non-Fiction Features Notebook. This will be kept in their Daily 5 folder to be used as a reference all year.

(If this is yours please let me know so I can give you credit. I'm not sure where we found this either!)

Have you seen or heard of this?

This is The Comprehension Toolkit

They have a separate book for various comprehension strategies that is complied with various lessons on that topic. There are even a few lessons on non-fiction text features. Our kids really look forward to these lessons. I think most of it is due to the fact that they freqently get to use post-its but -hey- who doesn't get excited about post-its?!

We would love to hear how you teach non-fiction text features in your classroom!