Reading Nonfiction

We are now in the 3rd week of our nonfiction reading unit.  For the first part of the year, our classroom library had a few fiction book bins, organized by author or theme, and a few popular nonfiction bins, such as "plants" and "how-to."  During our nonfiction unit, though, the whole library becomes dedicated to nonfiction.  Last year, I did the work of turning over our library and organizing the book bins.  This year, I really wanted to get the kids in on the action.

On the first day of the unit I pulled out a box of about 75 nonfiction books on a variety of topics.  I explained to my eager readers that I had found all of these nonfiction books in the closet (no lie) and needed their help to organize them.  We talked about how we could sort the books like librarians do: by author, by level,  by type (chapter books, picture books), or by topic.  We decided that sorting by topic made the most sense for nonfiction books, so I set a pile of books on each table and let them go to work!

The kiddos did a great job with this task, quickly making piles of animal books, bird books, insect books, plant books, and ocean creature books.  Then the kiddos came to group of books that presented a slight challenge.  They created a "dangerous things" pile (which included books on earthquakes, volcanos, twisters, and storms), a "weather" pile, and still had a few books on fossils and caves left over.  I knew that all of these books were actually part of an "earth science" set, but the kiddos insisted that they didn't all go together.  I began to push them to keep the set together, but then realized that their way made perfect sense too.  Instead, I taught them the term "natural disasters" for all of the "dangerous" topics, and we put the rest into a "weather and nature" bin. Problem solved!

I did have to gather up a few extra bins to accommodate all of our topics, but it was worth it to see how invested the kiddos have become in our library!  After we had all of our piles, I handed out some index cards and had the kiddos create labels for the bins.  They've been so excited to actually read the books they had put in the bins, and they're being very responsible about putting books back where they belong.