It’s surprising how much fiction has cornered the market in
children’s literature. The youth of our society prefer entertainment to facts, expanding
their imagination and creativity through enjoyable books. But informational
texts are needed as well. Non-fiction texts, including historical or scientific
journals, real life news, biographies and autobiographies, we give context and
comprehension to students’ minds. (Please don’t misunderstand these with
textbooks. We all know that most of those can be quite boring.)
By deepening and broadening content and comparing and
contrasting facts, we are giving opportunities for children to build critical
thinking skills, vocabulary, and comprehension of what they are learning and
reading. Studies have shown that non-fiction is a particularly wonderful way to
help “at-risk” lower socioeconomic, English learning, and special needs
students. By offering informational texts, we are providing an outlet for all
students to explore and expand their knowledge.
With this in mind, we created an awesome set of templates
for news article analysis. It uses the platform Newsela, a student-oriented
news provider who writes each story in five different reading levels. (Check out
our template package
here. You can choose to include stem questions in your templates.) Using
this in your classroom can help your students connect to real world events and
explore how it can affect them.
Though we haven’t included a ton of information on the
various studies done around non-fiction and its connection to higher literacy
and comprehension skills, we hope it’s enough to make you seek more information
and decide if more of its diverse forms can work into your curriculum and aid
your students to success.
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