Features of Non-Fiction Texts
The students were given ‘clues’ to help them think about a topic. How might clues help us learn more about the main topics?
How might we decide on the topics? What is the role of subtopics?
- Ella “Maybe something like a little bit from the topic. We should put a little bit about the topic. You can have many, many subtopics.”
- Seoyeon “Some part of the topic.”
The students decided that the first subtopic was about ‘Where spiders live’.
Next, the students made suggestions about the second clue. What could be a possible subtopic?
- Hyun Seo “What spiders have’.
- Amber “About their bodies.’
- Yuchan “What spiders look like’.
Together, the students included information on the graphic organizer about ‘spiders’.
Next, they worked in small groups to practice identifying the topic, subtopics, and details.
How would we use this knowledge when exploring non-fiction books?
How can this information help us conduct our own research?
- Gihyeon “When you can learn more about spiders then you can make spiders to pets. And you can be friends with a spiders.”
- Diego “If we know the topic, we will know more about this and we can talk about the other things about spiders. Because we want to know more about spiders. You don’t know something about spiders then you can learn.”
- Lawrence “Maybe you can know how to make a non-fiction book.”
- Alejandra “If we didn’t know about spiders we don’t know if it is poison or not. If you get more information from books then you can know more about which ones you can touch.”
- Sungbin “Why do spiders have poison?”
The students shared many different reasons:
- to catch their prey
- to protect themselves from other animals
- for safety
We wonder what more we might learn about living things.
