A Nonfiction New Year Celebration by Steve Tetreault
Back in October 2023, I joined Bluesky, and it’s helped me connect to a whole new group of fabulous educators. One of them is middle school librarian Steve Tetreault, who wrote today’s post. Thanks for sharing your Nonfiction New Year Celebration, Steve. Nonfiction has been my Achille’s heel as an educator and librarian. It has loomed as […]
Revisiting Nonfiction Writers Dig Deep: Why Students Plagiarize—It’s Not What You Think
As you read the mentor essays in Nonfiction Writers Dig Deep: 50 Award-winning Authors Share the Secret of Engaging Writing, you’ll see that the importance of making personal connections emerges again and again. A nonfiction’s writer’s personality, beliefs, and experiences in the world have a tremendous impact on how they evaluate, assimilate, analyze, and synthesize their […]
How Understanding Text Structures Helped My Writing
A quick search of this blog’s archive shows that one of the topics I’ve discussed most is text structures. Those posts date back all the way to 2009. Back then, I was just shooting in the dark. I knew structure was a critical element in nonfiction writing, especially when it has an expository writing style, but […]
The Writing Process as a Living Story
Last spring, I learned about this wonderful poem from Laura Purdie Salas, who spotted it on Amy Lugwig VanDerwater’s amazing blog The Poem Farm. I’m so grateful that Amy asked Adam to write about how the poem came to be: “It was a pouring night. I read a nonfiction book. It had a lot of facts. In bed, […]
Revisiting Nonfiction Writers Dig Deep: Starting with a Question
As you read the mentor essays in Nonfiction Writers Dig Deep: 50 Award-winning Authors Share the Secret of Engaging Writing, you’ll notice that, in some cases, professional writers start with a specific focus in mind. But for others, finding a focus is part of their creative process. In most cases, student writers will probably be in […]
Updated 5 Kinds of Nonfiction Sample Books by Category
Some of the most popular posts of all time on this blog are the 5 Kinds of Nonfiction book lists I first published in early 2018. When the book 5 Kinds of Nonfiction came out in 2021, it contained expanded, updated lists along with QR codes that readers could use to access additional titles sorted by […]
Revisiting Nonfiction Writers Dig Deep: Developing a Spirit of Inquiry
For the last couple of weeks, I’ve been describing strategies from the anthology Nonfiction Writers Dig Deep: 50 Award-winning Authors Share the Secret of Engaging Writing that students can use to choose topics they’re excited about for nonfiction writing projects. You can scroll down to read these posts. But to create a list of possible topics—an […]
Reading Rockets Interview
Not long ago, the folks at Reading Rockets interviewed me and edited our discussion into fourteen short videos that you can watch yourself or share with students. Topics include keeping a nature journal, research, text structure, nonfiction read alouds, the 5 Kinds of Nonfiction, and more. I hope you’ll take a look.
Text Scaffolding in Student Nonfiction Writing
Marlene Correia and I included a section about how text scaffolding can help young readers in Chapter 5 of 5 Kind of Nonfiction: Enriching Reading and Writing Instruction with Children’s Books. But last summer, I had a conversation with literacy educator Xenia Hadjioannou that has led me to think more deeply about it in terms of […]
An Innovative Resource for Teaching Informational Writing
Nonfiction Writers Dig Deep: 50 Award-winning Authors Share the Secret of Engaging Writing has been out in the world for just over 3 years now. Here’s what educators are saying about it: “I planned on reading just a few essays, but I couldn’t put it down. I was so moved by what these ‘creatives’ had […]