Non-Fiction with Gail Gibbons

Non-fiction Text Features and the Author of the Month!

This year I am really trying to make time for our author studies. Since there is so much going on it is hard to do one a month, so instead I have worked it to study one author every two months. To go along with our Journey's reading program I wanted to pick an author whose focus was non-fiction. So, who better than Gail Gibbons!

This is the poster that we have hung while we study her. I started by going to the local library (my FAVORITE place ever!!) and checking out as many books of hers as I could find. After a lesson on text features and a non-fiction/fiction book sort using Scholastic catalogs, is it was time for research. Before I sent the students off I had another mini-lesson on text features using the books I had checked out from the library.

Students were then paired up and were allowed to chose their topic from the stack of books I had. There were enough for them to all have a choice and really find a topic they were interested in. Over several days the students worked with their texts. They read, took notes, reread, and then created posters. The only directions they were given for their poster was that it needed to be informative, it should include a heading, at least five facts, and a picture. Many of my students chose to draw a diagram and here are what some of the posters came out like.

After everyone had finished their posters we set up a Gallery Walk. Students were asked to really study the posters that were created and take notes from the posters. They were to write down one fact from each poster (other than their own) that they found interesting.

The kids did such a good job and are getting better with non-fiction text features everyday!