Scavenger Hunt

Today in class we decided to have a little scavenger hunt. We had done this last week when we were thinking about genres. Ms. Cavallaro had asked the class to look through a bunch of scholastic book orders and cut out books that fit into certain genres. It was a fun lesson.

We wanted to get that same energy in the room today so instead of cutting up book orders we cut apart Time For Kids. When the students were cutting apart the magazine, they were looking for text features. The text features that the students included titles, subtitles, charts, maps, fact boxes, and a bunch of others. We made a poster in the front of the room to talk about why these features were important to the reader. I forgot to take a picture of our poster but here are some others I found on the internet tonight.

We really want the students to understand how important these text features can be when they read but we also want the students to understand that they can use these features when they write. Soon we will be dividing into five groups and writing articles about the drought. We have been researching and researching the drought this week. We are hoping now that we are talking about text features students will start to think about how they could use a map or a picture with a caption to make that piece of writing even stronger. 

If you are reading a magazine at home and you see some of these text features, ask to see if the students can recognize the features. Talk about why the author may have included that feature or how that feature would help you to better understand the text. These conversations will just reinforce the importance of these features when students read nonfiction.

Hope you are having a great week!