Are your students missing out on important information because they don’t know how to use nonfiction text features? Don’t worry, we’ve got you covered! We’ll show you five fun and effective ways to practice nonfiction text features with your students.
As adults, we know the importance of using headings, captions, and indexes to help us comprehend nonfiction texts. But for growing readers, it’s not always so clear. That’s why we need to explicitly teach and encourage students to interact with text features examples. Without this vital skill, they could be missing out on a huge piece of their own nonfiction reading comprehension puzzle.
To get started, try displaying a nonfiction word wall or anchor chart in your classroom. This will provide students with exposure to text features in nonfiction. You can also create posters that focus on just one or two features at a time, giving examples and student-friendly descriptions of how they help readers.
But, it’s not just about visuals. We also need to model and practice using them. That’s why we’ve put together five activities that will help your students become experts at using nonfiction text features. So let’s dive in and put together our lesson plan for text features!
1. Use Anchor Charts
Having nonfiction text features displayed on your classroom wall is a great way to provide students with exposure to them all year long. I like to display posters that includes vocabulary cards showing a text feature, a definition, and a visual example displayed as a reference. During direct instruction, I have posters that hone in on just one or two text features at a time. Each poster gives an example of the text feature, a student friendly description, and how it helps the reader. You can also create an anchor chart with cut-outs, or have students help you to create an anchor chart display with cut-out article examples from magazines or printed informational passages.
2. Introduce a Text Features Scavenger Hunt
A Nonfiction Text Features Scavenger Hunt is a fun way for students to find text features in a variety of informational texts. This hunt explores common nonfiction text Features. I offer different versions of scavenger hunts. In this example, students identify specific features, cite the page number or paragraph number they found it on, and describe how it was helpful to the reader.
3. Use a Text Features Worksheet
Students can also practice using informational text features by labeling them and answering comprehension questions. Essentially, this is a lesson plan for text features. By explicitly teaching them how to use headings, captions, and indexes, we can help our students unlock the full potential of their reading comprehension abilities. So let’s ensure that our young readers have the necessary tools to succeed in their academic and personal lives by giving them plenty of opportunities to practice.
The features to be labeled in this resource include:
4. Text Feature Sort
I really like using sorts because they are a hands-on activity! Once you print and cut them out they can be used over and over. They can be used as part of a reading center, in guided reading groups, as an early finisher activity, or as independent practice.
5. Digital Practice
Designed to make the classroom efficient and interactive, these task cards are presented as self-grading Google Forms that automatically generate a spreadsheet of student scores, making grading papers a thing of the past. Simply copy and paste the values into your grade book (or link your Google grade book), and your grading is done. The Google Form even shows graphical response data, making it easier than ever to assess your students’ mastery of the standards.
The auto-grading is all performed within this product. No add-ons, extensions, or extra preparation is required.
The task cards are perfect for laptops, iPads, Chromebooks, and tablets of all brands and operating systems! They integrate seamlessly with Google Classroom.
Sometimes, it’s fun to make a point to those readers who like to skip over the text features by retyping it with no features and asking them to read without them first. Once they do that, discuss how difficult comprehension was. Then, give them the original text and help them to see the difference it makes in understanding.
Text features help the reader make sense of what they are reading. They help readers determine what is important. In my experience, readers of all ages, especially struggling readers tend to skip over many of them. To help readers understand their importance, take some time before reading to look through the photographs/illustrations, charts, graphs, or maps and talk about what you notice. Make some predictions about what they’ll learn or start a list of questions they have.
You might also like “5 Quick Tips – Getting Students to Follow Directions.”
Happy Teaching!