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Non-fiction Reading UnitIntroduction

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Essential Questions

• How do capable readers make sense of nonfiction text?

• How do we read nonfiction text to become aware and empathetic to the needs of our community?

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Why Are We Doing This?

Practicing nonfiction reading by studying text structures can help us…

*Read faster**Understand better**Remember longer*

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Before Reading Strategies

(1) Access Prior Knowledge *What do you already know about the topic?

(2) Examine Text Features* title, bold faced words, italics, headings, graphics

(3) Predict the Text Structure of the article*hint: you can find useful clues in the title!

(4) Determine your reader’s purpose and (5) determine your reading rate

5Reader’s Purpose

People read for many different reasons: List a few!

When you read, it is often helpful to set a purpose for reading, or determine what you’d like to get out of a piece of writing.

To get an idea of that purpose, try asking yourself questions that begin with who, what, when, where, why, and how.

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During Reading Strategies

• Connect to Community• Predict• Infer• Annotate/Summarize

• *NOTE: Non-fiction requires a careful pace. If you read fiction quickly, make a conscious effort to slow down when reading non-fiction.

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What is a “text structure”?

• A “structure” is a building or framework.

• “Text structure” refers to how a piece of text is built

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Types of Text Structures

• Description – presenting a main idea and then offering several supporting details.

• Compare/Contrast – examining the similarities and differences of more than one topic.

• Problem/Solution – explaining a problem and offering solutions.

• Cause/Effect – explaining how one event leads to another.

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