Because nonfiction texts are read differently than fiction, students need different skills for decoding and interpreting nonfiction works. This NCTE Resource Kit offers strategies for helping students read and interpret nonfiction texts.
Lesson plans for this NCTE Resource Kit include:
Timelines and Texts: Motivating Students to Read Nonfiction
Using THIEVES to Preview Nonfiction Texts
Both of these lessons utilize effective strategies appropriate for nonfiction texts. They both work well to introduce unfamiliar nonfiction texts.
Developing a Definition of Reading through Analysis in Middle School
This lesson is an excellent way to introduce students to the metacognitive processes that they are going to need to improve their nonfiction reading skills.
Blending Fiction and Nonfiction to Improve Comprehension and Writing Skills
On Days 2 and 3 of this lesson intended for elementary school students (though easily adapted to secondary), students read a nonfiction text and a fiction text in order to determine the similarities and differences in the features of each.
Be a Reading Detective: Finding Similarities and Differences in Ideas
Though this lesson is also designed for elementary and middle school levels, it is a great one to help students to think about how they read fiction and nonfiction texts differently. It contains a “Reader’s Toolbox” that helps students to look closely at their purposes for reading.
Building Reading Comprehension through Think-Alouds
While this lesson does not discuss nonfiction directly, the metacognitive skill of “thinking aloud” is an essential one for students to gain so that they can vary the ways they read, depending on the text.
Scaffolding Comprehension Strategies Using Graphic Organizers
This lesson presents a variety of graphic organizers intended to help students comprehend challenging texts. It would be useful to ask students to examine the various organizers and to identify the purposes for using each. Then, students can be asked whether these are the same kinds of organizers that would be used for reading fiction texts.
Defining Literacy in a Digital World
This lesson is an excellent introduction to the broad definition of text that NCTE and this kit propose. In addition to a Web Site Analysis Worksheet, there is also a link to a highly engaging interactive tool that explores a variety of online sources.
Audience, Purpose, and Language Use in Electronic Messages
Though ultimately this lesson is about writing in an online world, specifically e-mail, instant messaging, and so on, it allows students to recognize and analyze the variety of voices they use for particular purposes.
Imagine That! Playing with Genre through Newspapers and Short Stories
This is another interesting extension activity that would take advantage of students’ knowledge of and interest in nonfiction texts and documentaries.