nonfiction book studies

It's no secret I've absolutely fallen in love with novel studies in my classroom. Small group novel studies are an amazing way to get my kids diving into authentic texts, discussing them, and writing in response. I was noticing tremendous gains in my students' ability to think deeply and write about fiction texts. However, this knowledge was not always transferring to non-fiction texts. So I set out to get the same kind of results with non-fiction.

We know students need to be spending more time in the non-fiction world. It's in all the research and standards. But there is a reason we struggle with it. It's TOUGH! I knew that the success behind novel studies was the buy-in with my kiddos. I needed to get them to buy-in to non-fiction. So I started looking for non-fiction chapter books that are engaging for students.

Once you find the titles your kids will love, start building up. I have built my novel/book study library through Donors Choose. I've done this successfully twice. In my experience, people are willing to pay for books. Even non-educators know that books are vital, and books are sustainable. I can use book sets from year to year and reach so many kids. 

Want to start building your classroom book study library? 

• Use Donors Choose
• Check your local thrift stores: once you know the titles to look for, you can find copies here and there and everywhere.
• Ask friends on social media to donate (people always want to help!)
• Use Scholastic: this is the big one. Almost all of my novel studies/book studies are built around titles I got through Scholastic when they were on sale for a dollar. Scholastic always has titles for a dollar which saves you a ton and still allows you to build points. If you use their program for students/parents in your class to buy books, you earn points. Points can go toward books and Scholastic obviously always has quality titles. 

What non-fiction books have been engaging for my students? Here's the list and the best part is...they're all series! 

• Magic Tree House Fact Tracker 
• Ken Jennings Genius Guides 
• Who Is/What Is 

So, once you've begun building a library with quality titles, you're ready to start getting them in the hands of your kids! I do novel/book studies with my kids during guided reading time. My goal is to get students reading, thinking, talking, and writing. I love our leveled libraries and use them often. But I have found such buy-in handing books (chapter books) to my kids. If it makes you nervous, do what I did and start with one group. Your higher level kids would probably be a good choice, but I use these units with my on-level or "bubble" kids and can really tell the difference. A lot of times those bubble kids just need a push toward wanting to read. I got the Magic Tree House Fact Tracker: Soccer book specifically because I had a handful of kids obsessed with soccer. They actually screamed when I pulled the book out. They were so excited to get started and asked to work on their book study during independent time. This is the buy-in you need. This buy-in leads to learning. 

When I set out to create the book study units for these new titles, I started by listing the big goals I had for my students. I wanted them to focus on 

• vocabulary
• text features
• close reading/critical thinking skills
• comprehension (with a focus on information!)

That is why these units include 

• prior knowledge inventory
• schema page
• genre & author's purpose analysis 
• anticipation guide for each chapter 
• literary vocabulary for each chapter
• academic (content-specific) vocabulary for each chapter
• critical thinking/close reading questions
• text feature hunt
• comprehension graphic organizers

I started using these units with my kids and it worked exactly how I wanted! My students were excited to read non-fiction titles, they completely bought into their learning, and they were successfully navigating the world of non-fiction.

And your students can do it too!

Happy Teaching!