Dabble with alternatives to the traditional research paper

Have you ever considered options beyond the traditional report? Check out what four different teachers did to dabble with research writing in their classrooms.    read more...

Lead students through a nonfiction scavenger hunt

Nonfiction text features offer clues to the reader that aid in comprehension. However, there are many students that ignore these elements and think of them simply as decoration, rather than information. Be intentional about teaching text features, rather than assuming students learned them in a previous grade.    read more...

Picture books build background knowledge on hard-to-grasp topics

Most picture books (also known as "children's literature") are usually 32 pages or less with illustrations on every page or double-page spread. At first glance, most middle school and high school teachers would walk past them assuming picture books to be for an elementary classroom only. However, the power of these texts is that it can help students learn more about the world around them.    read more...

There is no “I” in “Research Paper”

Teaching students to move from the first-person personal narrative to the third-person research paper is difficult. Many students struggle to omit the first-person pronoun from their drafts.    read more...

How do I get students to deliver a speech and not to read their writing?

Q: I recently had students present an oral summary of a nonfiction piece they wrote. I told them they shouldn't just stand up in front of the class and read their whole piece to us, yet most of them did. HELP! How do I get students to deliver a speech and not to read their writing?    read more...

Teach students to note important information

Start saving those Snapple drink caps! Underneath each lid is a Snapple Fact. Julie Meitzler has found them to be a fabulous tool when teaching her Bluffton-Harrison fourth graders how to sift through nonfiction research, sorting out the generic information from the most important.    read more...

Jumpstarting a nonfiction/research unit

Jumpstarting a nonfiction/research unit is a popular topic with many teachers. Several of you emailed excited to dive into a nonfiction writing unit, so I thought I'd give you a couple additional ideas this fuel the fire.    read more...

Preparing for research papers

For intermediate and secondary teachers, second semester curriculum often includes the "research paper unit." With this comes the usual woes of teaching students how to organize note cards, paraphrase, and draft a strong thesis statement.    read more...

Seeking out quality, short nonfiction passages

One way to help students with this type of crunch-time reading and writing is to give them more opportunities in class to read shorter pieces (short stories, short biographies, nonfiction passages on content-area topics, poems on content-area topics, etc.)    read more...

Finding the important info in nonfiction research

We know that comprehension increases when students have an authentic purpose for their content- area and textbook reading. Mary Hall (Sweetser Elementary, Sweetser, IN) helps her students identify their purpose by teaching them to turn traditional chapter subheadings into questions    read more...