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. Download the “Let’s Examine Our Text” handout.
Discuss not only what each feature is, but where it is usually found within the text and the purpose this feature serves for the reader. For example, it’s one thing to know what a subhead is, but it’s essential students know the purpose of a subhead. Be intentional about teaching these text components.
Seeing the power of such information, Wawasee Middle School (Syracuse, IN) sixth grade teacher Andrea Komorowski took this lesson one step further. Beyond just teaching the text features, she turned it into a partner scavenger hunt. With students in pairs, she provided each team a different informational article. The pairs were to read their text and study its elements. When they found one of the text features from the “Let’s Examine Our text” handout, they did more than just mark it off. They also marked it on a class chart Andrea had created. (See photo.) She put the name of each article across the top of the chart and listed each type of text feature along the left. When each pair found a text feature in their own article, they would mark their column with a Post-it.
Andrea said this scavenger hunt helped the students learn the various features of informational text while allowing them an opportunity to be up and down during class time. Great idea! Thanks for sharing Andrea!