You have little people, correct? When I taught 3rd graders I took about a week to intro and talk. They had about a week to make their Nonfiction Convention books. They needed to know how to access the text, not so much how the text was structured. I got this lesson directly from Nonfiction Matters by Stephanie Harvey, and I think there is something similar in Strategies That Work also, with determining important info or questioning, but I can't remember exactly...
Here's what I did: I used books about animals, because they are always successful. I brought the kids into a circle in the groups area during Soc. St. and/or Science time. I put the books in the middle and told everyone to grab one they thought looked interesting. I gave them a few minutes just to peruse them. I had them trade books several times and just let them enjoy and share with each other. The next day I passed out the books again and asked them, "How did the author share his/her information with us?" I jumped on the first suggestion that there was stuff in the print that he/she wanted to show was important. Before long, we generated a list. I would help them put labels on what they found (subheadings, charts, maps, etc.). The list would get sort of extensive, but over the discussion for several days, they caught most of the conventions of expository text. I had them make a small book called My Nonfiction Convention Book out of half pages of regular copy paper. I would use an accordion book now, but I didn't know about that then. I demonstrated how to choose one of the conventions from one of the pages, how to title it with the chosen convention, draw an example of the convention, and write a definition of the purpose of the convention. They worked on it for about a week. They shared their books with their science groups. I have done this with 4,5,6 graders in multiage also. It always was successful. I hope that helps. Kim -- Kimberlee Hannan Department Chair Sequoia Middle School Fresno, CA _______________________________________________ Mosaic mailing list [email protected] To unsubscribe or modify your membership please go to http://literacyworkshop.org/mailman/options/mosaic_literacyworkshop.org. Search the MOSAIC archives at http://snipurl.com/MosaicArchive.
