In Reading Workshop, students in 3rd grade have been exploring nonfiction texts. Their study began with reading narrative nonfiction, focusing on biographies. Students thought about how a time period and other relationships had an effect on a person’s life, character traits to describe him or her, and contributions to society.
To extend understanding of non-fiction text, students engaged in a biography project, where they chose a person of interest to research at home. Students found factual information about their person, including interesting facts, strong adjectives that described the person, how they contributed to society, and why their story was worthy of going to press. Students presented their projects to their class by dressing up in costumes, using relevant props, creating posters about the person, replicating artwork, and sharing other artifacts.
Classmates enjoyed learning about many different people who have contributed to our world from the 1700s through today from all walks of life. Students will continue exploring nonfiction texts in the classroom, moving our focus towards expository nonfiction.
