5 Kinds Of Nonfiction

Once upon a time...children's nonfiction books were stodgy, concise, and not very kid friendly. Most were text heavy, with just a few scattered images decorating the content and meaning, rather than enhancing it. Over the last 20 years, children's nonfiction has evolved into a new breed of visually dynamic and engaging texts.In 5 Kinds of Nonfiction: Enriching Reading and Writing Instruction with Children's Books , Melissa Stewart and Dr. Marlene Correia present a new way to sort nonfiction into five major categories and show how doing so can help teachers and librarians build stronger readers and writers. Along the way, they: Introduce the 5 kinds of nonfiction: Active, Browseable, Traditional, Expository Literature, and Narrative -;and explore each category through discussions, classroom examples, and insights from leading children's book authorsOffer tips for building strong, diverse classroom texts and library collectionsProvide more than 20 activities to enhance literacy instructionInclude innovative strategies for sharing and celebrating nonfiction with students.With more than 150 exemplary nonfiction book recommendations and Stewart and Correia's extensive knowledge of literacy instruction, 5 Kinds of Nonfiction will elevate your understanding of nonfiction in ways that speak specifically to the info-kids in your classrooms, but will inspire all readers and writers.

How closely do your students read their writing? What are the implications for those who do and those who don't? During her work in classrooms, literacy coach Paula Bourque noticed that students who read their own writing closely are engaged in their work, write fluently, are able to produce lengthy drafts, and incorporate teaching points from mini-lessons into the day's writing. In this comprehensive book, Paula shows you that no matter what structures or lessons you use in your writing classroom, the strategies in Close Writing will help you make these better by creating student writers who are more aware of what effective writing looks like, who care about what they write, and who take ownership and responsibility for their growth as writers. Paula argues that a key element in close writing is learning to look and looking to learn by closely reading our own writing. Instead of focusing on the mechanics of their writing, she encourages students to read their words for understanding, clarity, and the effect they will have on an audience. She urges them to recognize their habits and their approaches to writing and to build upon them. Close Writing is based on research and methods that are reliable and valid best practices, but it will not prescribe lessons or structures. It gives you a peek inside classrooms where teachers just like you are working with budding authors just like yours. Paula also provides considerations for ELL writers, as well as a section of interviews with authors. She shares an extensive reference/resource guide, and a companion website with students' work samples, reproducibles and templates, and videos of classroom writing lessons round out this must-have resource.

From the authors of the bestselling Fact vs. Fiction, this book offers easy-to-implement lessons to engage students in becoming media literacy “digital detectives,” looking for clues, questioning motives, uncovering patterns, developing theories and, ultimately, delivering a verdict. The current news landscape is driven by clicks, with every social media influencer, trained and citizen journalists chasing the same goal: a viral story. In this environment, where the race to be first on the scene with the most sensational story often overshadows the need for accuracy, traditional strategies for determining information credibility are no longer enough. Rather than simply helping students become savvy information consumers, today’s educators must provide learners with the skills to be digital detectives – information interrogators who are armed with a variety of tools for dissecting news stories and determining what’s real and what isn’t in our “post-truth world.” This book: • Shares meaningful lessons that move beyond traditional “fake news” protocols to help learners navigate a world in which information can be both a force for good and a tool used to influence and manipulate. • Includes resources and examples to support educators in the work of facilitating engaging, relevant (and fun!) instructional opportunities for K-12 learners, in both face-to-face and digital learning environments. • Unpacks the connection between social-emotional learning and information literacy. • Includes access to the Digital Detective’s Evidence Locker, an online collection of over 100 downloadable and remixable resources to support the lessons in the book. As the authors state: “Remember, the detective’s job is NOT to prove themselves correct. Their job is to detect the truth!” This statement reflects the way they approach the lessons in this book, providing clear and practical guidance to help educators address and overcome this ever-expanding issue.

Help students think while they read in all subject areas, with the key skills of connecting, questioning, visualizing, inferring, and synthesizing.

From award-winning author Melissa Stewart and Caldecott honoree Steve Jenkins comes a noisy nonfiction exploration of the many sounds animals make. Can an aardvark bark? No, but it can grunt. Lots of other animals grunt too… Barks, grunts, squeals—animals make all kinds of sounds to communicate and express themselves. With a growling salamander and a whining porcupine, bellowing giraffes and laughing gorillas, this boisterous book is chock-full of fun and interesting facts and is sure to be a favorite of even the youngest animal enthusiasts.

Read Along or Enhanced eBook: Young naturalists meet sixteen birds in this elegant introduction to the many uses of feathers. A concise main text highlights how feathers are not just for flying. More curious readers are invited to explore informative sidebars, which underscore specific ways each bird uses its feathers for a variety of practical purposes. A scrapbook design showcases life-size feather illustrations.

Masters of Doom is the amazing true story of the Lennon and McCartney of video games: John Carmack and John Romero. Together, they ruled big business. They transformed popular culture. And they provoked a national controversy. More than anything, they lived a unique and rollicking American Dream, escaping the broken homes of their youth to co-create the most notoriously successful game franchises in history—Doom and Quake—until the games they made tore them apart. Americans spend more money on video games than on movie tickets. Masters of Doom is the first book to chronicle this industry’s greatest story, written by one of the medium’s leading observers. David Kushner takes readers inside the rags-to-riches adventure of two rebellious entrepreneurs who came of age to shape a generation. The vivid portrait reveals why their games are so violent and why their immersion in their brilliantly designed fantasy worlds offered them solace. And it shows how they channeled their fury and imagination into products that are a formative influence on our culture, from MTV to the Internet to Columbine. This is a story of friendship and betrayal, commerce and artistry—a powerful and compassionate account of what it’s like to be young, driven, and wildly creative. “To my taste, the greatest American myth of cosmogenesis features the maladjusted, antisocial, genius teenage boy who, in the insular laboratory of his own bedroom, invents the universe from scratch. Masters of Doom is a particularly inspired rendition. Dave Kushner chronicles the saga of video game virtuosi Carmack and Romero with terrific brio. This is a page-turning, mythopoeic cyber-soap opera about two glamorous geek geniuses—and it should be read while scarfing down pepperoni pizza and swilling Diet Coke, with Queens of the Stone Age cranked up all the way.”—Mark Leyner, author of I Smell Esther Williams

A teacher's guide to using fiction and nonfiction picture books to teach life sciences.