Making a Non-Fiction Big Book

For our writing unit this month we focused on constructing a class big book about cheetahs. This provided a fantastic way to give students a model for upcoming science research projects that the children will be working on. This has always been my favorite writing unit, as I love to see the student’s faces when the end product comes together. However, getting to that “end product” involves a ton of mini-lessons and one on one conferencing.

The first few mini-lessons involved exposing children to a variety of non-fiction texts. Whether it was during shared reading (using Time For Kids articles on the overhead), or during a science lesson, it was important for students to feel comfortable identifying the features of non-fiction text and use them appropriately. Students then created a chart listing these features which would eventually serve as a tool for creating an outline guide when creating our big book.

The next mini-lesson involved choosing a topic. This year, we chose an animal to focus on. This was done in a democratic way; we voted and then tallied the results. Students chose cheetahs as the topic, hands-down. In order to determine what children already knew about this topic, we filled in a KWL chart. We also discussed how a rubric works for a non-fiction writing piece. It was important for students to understand what my expectations were.

Then, as a class, we discussed the different resources we could use to locate information on cheetahs. The students were very “big” on using the Internet, which I encouraged, since a lot of them are very savvy at this type of research. However, I wanted them to use books and articles as well. Within a week, we had a ton of resources and I started my next few mini-lessons on taking notes.          

When I introduced the concept of taking notes, I talked about the fact that students shouldn't copy down the information word for word. We practiced re-wording information from several resources. I referred back to our non-fiction checklist to start creating an outline for our big book. This served as a great organizational tool which could be used for our upcoming science project. The students helped me create chapter titles and identified information that they thought should be included in each chapter. I assigned children chapters to work on and they started taking notes. During this time, several students were on the computer, others were using books they took out from the library to complete their notes, and I was conferencing constantly.

The next mini-lesson was on how to use the information from their notes to create paragraphs. For this lesson, I used chart paper and discussed the importance of having a topic sentence. Each group brainstormed a topic sentence and modeled how to write it onto the chart paper. After each topic sentence was created, I discussed how to use the notes and transform the ideas into complete sentences. Then, each group was sent back to a table to work together on developing their chapter. The students were instructed to “share the pen” and they did this wonderfully! After about twenty minutes of writing and conferencing with the groups, I had them share during author’s chair time.

Next we focused on editing the rough drafts on the big chart paper. We put boxes around words that should go into the glossary and corrected spelling and grammar mistakes. One of the things I've noticed about this phase is that the student's paragraphs never lacked details, but lacked organization. By thinking aloud and saying things like, “Hmm, this fact doesn’t seem to fit here, can we think of another place it might fit better?” the students were able to rearrange their paragraphs correctly.

Once our writing was done, students concentrated on illustrating cheetahs in action. While students were illustrating, I called groups over to help construct the actual big book. We also constructed  a cover using glitter, and cheetah cut-outs.  This was such an exciting time for my students! This book also served as a great springboard for their science research project. For more lesson ideas, see below.

Non-Fiction Writing Lessons and Activities:

Informative Writing

Students gather information to write, edit, and revise a research paper.

Non-Fiction Animal Picture Books

Students research a specific animal and create a mini picture book about that animal.

Non-Fiction Lesson

Students take notes about a non-fiction topic and analyze how fiction differs from non-fiction.