Nonfiction Writing

We continue to dive into nonfiction writing in the first grade.  This is an important unit - in almost every subject area of the school curriculum, your child will be asked to write nonfiction.  Years from now, whether in high school, college, or for their career, these students will be immersed in nonfiction. Our current unit, in first grade, however is also important because each student is having an opportunity and being given a chance to teach one another what they know.  You should have heard some of the how-to pieces your children read and how proud they were to teach one another how to do something!  Those weeks before vacation were devoted to writing how-to books.  We had a lot of fun writing these and acting them out to ensure we didn't miss anything. (Ask your child how I did feeding Fred after a student attempted to direct!) 

Now, as you probably have heard, your child is writing a giant All-About Book, complete with chapters.  Each book has a table of contents, and children are learning to organize their information into the appropriate chapters.  They are learning also that each chapter has its own organizational structure.  If a child is writing about the different kinds of something, the chapter will be sectioned into categories...If a child is writing how to do something, the chapter resembles a how-to book.  For now, these All-About Books are based on topics in which the child has personal expertise, and then in a few weeks, we'll begin our all -about books on our chosen Vermont animal. If you need help finding sources for this research with your child at home, be sure to let me know!

The last 2 days the students have been immersed in exploring a variety of All-About books and learning about how they are organized.  We have explored the table of contents, and noticed how these books are broken up into chapters or sections. We have also been noticing the different sections and how some of these books have how-to books inside!  We've brainstormed topics for these all-about books, chosen 1 after doing a "try it" task and then got to work on creating a table of contents. 

All-About Dogs                                                            All-About Babies