Non-Fiction Texts and Animal Book Reports

The month of February has had us busy! We started the month by discussing the differences between fiction and non-fiction texts and learning about the different features of non-fiction texts including table of contents, glossaries, indexes, text boxes and captions. Students are putting their learning into practice and are now using a non fiction text about an animal of their choice to write a mini-report on that animal's diet, habitat, life cycle, predators and appearance. Currently they are finishing up the research and jot note taking stage and will soon move into writing their first draft and editing their work.

Since it is also Black History Month, I have taken the opportunity to read a number of read-aloud stories about Rosa Parks, Henry "Box" Brown and Martin Luther King Jr. This has led to a number of very interesting and thought provoking questions and discussions in class.

Inferring

Last week we began a new reading unit: Inferring. "Reading between the lines" is one way to think abut inferring. It is filling in, in your head, what is  not written on the page. When readers to learn to infer while reading, they learn to look for clues in text, in pictures and in their own knowledge that will help them make sense of the text. This is a challenging reading strategy but I will be introducing it using simple texts and providing many opportunities for students to easily and successfully fill in parts of the story to practise their inferring skills.