Rethinking the 80/20 Split

If you're an average reader, about 80% of the reading you do each day is nonfiction. I found this statistic surprising at first. But when we consider nonfiction broadly and include catalogs, letters, emails, maps, recipes, directions, and online reviews and advertisements, along with more conventional nonfiction texts, it makes sense. Given that nonfiction reading occupies such a large part of our lives, it also makes sense for students to spend more time learning to  read nonfiction. Elementary school reading programs traditionally featured about 80% fiction to 20% nonfiction. That ratio is changing quickly and our classroom provides an example of how.

Nonfiction occupies about one-third of our classroom library - and our collection is growing. The boys and girls read a weekly news magazine. They are regularly exposed to content-area reading in social studies and science. They know how to use computers to tap into information on the Internet. And right now, we're midway through our second nonfiction reading unit. The children are immersed in reading about the biomes of the world. Biomes, especially their animals and plants, are high-interest topics. But our lessons aren't specific to these. Our focus is on gaining an understanding of nonfiction structures and features and a facility with the strategies that successful nonfiction readers use - knowledge and skills that can be transferred to all informational texts.

This week's lessons included a discussion of how readers have two voices: a speaking voice and a thinking voice. The speaking voice is the one that reads the words on a page. The thinking voice is the one inside your head that you use to process, ponder, and question. The message here is that nonfiction readers have big thinking jobs to do; that they are active, not passive. We also studied various text features such as headings, captions, and diagrams to see how readers use them in conjunction with text to make meaning.

Part of what makes this nonfiction reading unit so powerful is its alignment with nonfiction writing. As they read, the boys and girls are learning about note-taking, summarizing, and paraphrasing. They are taking the new information they read, making it their own, and then finding ways to teach others about it through their writing. This is a big step from teaching others about known topics like hockey, gymnastics, or how to ride a two-wheel bike. Each student is using a tabbed research notebook to collect facts and organize them by topics. These topic-based notes then get turned into the chapters of books.

In math this week, the children practiced the challenging work of triple-digit subtraction with ungrouping. We've used to the idea of looking at equations with a magnifying glass to see the tens in the hundreds and the ones in the tens. The boys and girls understand that ungrouping is another way of looking at a number. Its value doesn't change.

In science, our unit on the states of matter continues. We wrapped up a look at solids by building bridges and towers from various man-made solids. We looked at natural solids, too. Now, we're investigating different kinds of liquids and identifying properties such as transparency and viscosity. We're exploring the ways that liquids flow and pour and how they take the shapes of their containers.

Mark Your Calendars:

Tues. April 25 - Book Fair and Cake Walk

Fri., April 28 - Field trip to Nicolet High School to see "Alice in Wonderland." Thanks for returning permission slips and fees.

Fri., May 12 - PTO-sponsored Special Interest Day (PM)

Thurs., May 18 - Safety Day with the Fox Point Police Department (AM)

Thurs., May 25 - Field trip. Walking tour of downtown Milwaukee. A letter and permission slip will be sent home shortly.