Overview | What are the differences between fiction and nonfiction? How do we read texts of these two types differently? In this lesson, students reflect on their experiences reading nonfiction works in school, compare reading fiction to reading nonfiction and develop reading strategies. Finally, they investigate and recommend nonfiction titles appropriate for their school curriculum.
Teachers | What nonfiction do you teach? Why? Tell us here.
Materials | Student journals, handouts, nonfiction text excerpts (as described in the activity below), computers with Internet access, copies of reading lists
Warm-up | Tell students to open their journals and list as many titles as they can remember reading for school (you may wish to limit this to middle school or high school). Then invite them to share titles, and write them on the board. Prompt students to add to the master list all school reading material, including textbooks, historical documents and so on. Next, ask students to direct you in circling those that are considered nonfiction. You might also make a mark next to each title to indicate what subject area or class students read it in.
Together look at the results, and pose some or all of the following questions for discussion: How do you define nonfiction? What types of writing fit into this category? Encourage students to think broadly here and keep a list of “subgenres” on the board for use later in the lesson.
Continue: How does the number of nonfiction titles you’ve read compare to the number of fictional ones? Why do you think that is? What is the best piece of nonfiction writing you have read and why? Why do you suppose the content in English classes tips toward fiction? Which reading experiences – fiction or nonfiction – have you most enjoyed? Why? What can reading nonfiction give you that reading fiction can’t?
Related | The blog Idea of the Day, written by Tom Kuntz and other editors of the Week in Review, features “must-reads” from around the Web. The post“Schools’ Nonfiction Problem (True Story)” notes that a Washington Post columnist recently voiced concerns about the dearth of nonfiction reading going on in schools:
[… O]n his Washington Post blog Class Struggle, Jay Mathews, a veteran education writer, highlightslongstanding concerns among some educators that youthful reading is weighted too much toward fiction — a view seconded on other blogs (like here, here and here).
A new catalyst to the brow-furrowing is a recentcomprehensive survey of what grade- and high school students actually read (whether it’s assigned or not). The top 20 books read by high schoolers included only two nonfiction works: “Night,” Elie Wiesel’s story of his boyhood in the Holocaust, and “A Child Called ‘It,’ ” by Dave Pelzer, a first-person account of child abuse (whichsome dispute as largely fiction anyway).
Read the blog post with your class, using the questions below. To prompt further discussion, encourage them to read the original column, too.
Questions | For discussion and reading comprehension:
- Why, according to some,, is it problematic that students are not reading nonfiction?
- Why do schools tend to give them “short shrift”?
- Why do you think titles like “Night” and “A Child Called It” are among those most frequently taught? To what genre do they belong?
- Do you think students should read more nonfiction in school? Why or why not?
- What do you expect when reading a piece of nonfiction like this blog post? How are your expectations for nonfiction different from those for fiction? Do you feel as prepared to read and discuss nonfiction as you do to read and discuss fiction?
