1.
Sequence of Events: An interactive activity which helps young children understand how details within text (one paragraph) are connected to support meaning.
2. Check out this
Reading Rockets video interview with non-fiction children’s book author, Gail Gibbons.
3.
Storyline Online is where children can hear the books Stellaluna and The Rainbow Fish being read aloud by members of the Actors’ Screen Guild. Although these books are not purely informational, they contain information about the animal characters. After listening to the books, the teacher can think-aloud to describe connections between two individuals, and events, pieces of information.
4.
National Geographic offers nature videos to support teacher-developed think-aloud and shared activities where various ideas, events and other information are shared and, then connected.
5. In this
YouTube video, the teacher explains how to use a Venn Diagram by comparing information from two books. The Venn Diagram contains illustrations rather than words to show how the similarities and differences in the information from the two books. Kindergarten teachers can adapt the format to determining similarities and differences within the text.
6. In this
YouTube video, the first grade teacher explains the use of the KWL chart with non-fiction books. Included in this video is a movie of a blue whale short story. During the blue whale movie, the whale is described. The movie lends itself to a discussion of making connections between pieces of information within text as well as a discussion of differences and similarities.
7. The
“Improving K-3 Reading Comprehension” module includes a video that is available at the Doing What Works Clearinghouse. Although, at first glance, the video appears to be on narrative text structure, informational text structure comprises as large part of the video. The video does not directly focus on this standard, but provides helpful guidance to teachers.
8.
An Introduction to Comprehensive Assessment and
High Expectations: Students Learn to Rise to the Occasion are two videos from the Edutopia website. Although these videos are not directly related to teaching differences between fiction and non-fiction, they provide an overview of the assessment process in elementary grades. See also Battelle for Kids, under at the “assessment” tab.