Wait, there are books that have real things in them?!

Since the beginning of school, kindergarten has been learning about different genres of literature. First we had Fiction, then came Animal Fantasy,  next was the all exciting Folktale, and last, but not least, poetry. This month, we're learning all about nonfiction and...

What are the differences between  FICTION and NON-FICTION?

To begin, last week we discussed what we noticed about nonfiction books and made an anchor chart.

This week, we looked at the differences between fiction and nonfiction stories with a partner. The students looked at the books and discussed what they saw. Then, we came up with a new anchor chart: fiction vs. nonfiction.

The students noticed really wonderful text features of nonfiction books including photographs, table of contents, index, word list, and most importantly, that the books we thought were nonfiction had all real things in them. Last week, one student even saw that nonfiction books can teach us things!

When asked which book their group thought was fiction, they held up the books on the left.
When asked which were nonfiction, they held up the books on the right.

Now that we're a bit more familiar with nonfiction books, we did a fun activity with Scholastic book order magazines. We cut out books we thought were fiction and nonfiction and sorted them accordingly.

The student's LOVE learning about this genre mainly because they're in love with the National Geographic animal books. If you don't have any in your home library, Scholastic has them available to order through the monthly book order!