Kids Love Nonfiction: Changing My Mindset by Kaitlin Alvine
Today we hear from fourth grade teacher Kaitlin Alvine who I met on the #classroombookaday Facebook group, created and maintained by uber-dedicated school librarian Jillian Heise. I highly recommend this group! Like many educators, Kaitlin is just beginning to understand the power of nonfiction to turn children into passionate readers. Thank you, Kaitlin, for sharing […]
Sibert Book Club Shines a Light on Nonfiction by Jessica Fries-Gaither
In the past, I’ve written a #SibertSmackdown Wrap-up post with tidbits from some of the schools that participated. But last year, I decided to invite educators to share their experiences directly. And it was a great decision—teachers and librarians loved hearing from their colleagues. So this year, I’m doing it again. Most of these posts […]
Reading Nonfiction Aloud
As I was adding the read aloud guide for Whale Fall to my website, I realized that I hadn’t blogged about nonfiction read alouds for a while, and, well, there’s no time like the present. When it comes to read alouds, most teachers and librarians turn to fiction, but nonfiction read alouds can be just as […]
#KidsLoveNonfiction: An Update
Happy Valentine’s Day! It’s the perfect day to celebrate the people and things we love. It’s also the 1-year anniversary of the #KidsLoveNonfiction campaign—an effort to raise awareness of all the wonderful nonfiction books available today and to celebrate the children who love reading them. The campaign launched with a letter asking the New York Times […]
5 Ways to Increase Nonfiction Circulation & Create Passionate Nonfiction Readers
On October 13, SLJ is hosting a webinar you won’t want to miss. Inspired by posts written by some uber-dedicated school librarians and published on this blog last spring and earlier this fall, 5 Ways to Increase Nonfiction Circulation & Create Passionate Nonfiction Readers will jump start your thinking about classroom, school library, and public […]
The Lowdown on Our Smackdown by Galiah Morgenstern
In the past, I’ve written a #SibertSmackdown Wrap-up post with tidbits from some of the classes and schools who participated. But this year, I decided to try something a little bit different. I invited some of the participating teachers to share a reflection of their class’s experience with the activity, and it was a great […]
Rainforest Read Alouds + Combining Science with ELA
Many elementary classrooms do a unit about rain forests, and it’s a wonderful way to combine science and language arts. Here are five fantastic read alouds that look at the topic through a variety of lenses—fiction, nonfiction, and informational fiction; expository and narrative; biography and cumulative text. There’s something to engage every child. The Leaf […]
Narrative Nonfiction Is 100% Verifiable
During a recent discussion on social media, I realized that some educators seem to be confused about the meaning of the term “narrative nonfiction.” First and foremost, narrative nonfiction is meticulously researched and every single fact and idea is true. In other words, the information presented in the text is 100 percent verifiable. Period. The […]
We Still Need Diverse Nonfiction
Last fall, I wrote a post entitled “We Need Diverse Nonfiction” to highlight the unfortunate lack of nonfiction, especially the four categories of nonfiction with an expository writing style (active, browseable, traditional, expository literature), by BIPOC. Since then, I’ve continued to keep track of BIPOC authors everyone should be aware of. Here are some authors you may […]
Resources for Educators: Nonfiction Read Alouds
More and more, teachers are requesting educational resources that go beyond traditional teachers guides and activity sheets. So while I do still have those kinds of materials on my website, I’m also offering resources that delve deeply into the nonfiction reading and writing process from an author’s point of view. Some of these resources focus […]