Motivating Reluctant Readers with Informational Texts

When asked what motivates them to read expository (nonfiction) text, children placed emphasis on three areas:  knowledge gained, personal interests, and choice (Edmunds and Bauserman, 2006).

Informational texts tend to be a great motivator for reluctant readers for the three reasons found in the study above.  Children gain knowledge when they choose to read about topics that interest them. The following informational texts are great for reluctant readers:

Magazines

Magazines are great for reluctant readers because they provide short articles that engage readers, but aren’t too long to intimidate readers.  Here are a few I would recommend:

Time for Kids

The children’s edition of Time Magazine, this periodical is bright and colorful and full of engaging current events for children.

National Geographic Kids

The children’s edition of National Geographic, this periodical is also bright and colorful and full of engaging science and social studies topics.

Ranger Rick

Published by the National Wildlife Federation, this periodical provides informative articles about animals and nature.

Sports Illustrated Kids (1-year)

The children’s edition of Sports Illustrated, this periodical is perfect for the sports lover in your life!

Trade Books

Often short texts that concentrate on one topic.  Historically based picture books are great motivating informational texts for reluctant readers.

Jean Fritz books (great for older readers who want to learn about the period of The Revolutionary War)

Will You Sign Here, John Hancock?

Can’t You Make Them Behave, King George?

Picture Books

Henry’s Freedom Box (Caldecott Honor Book)

A Picture Book of Christopher Columbus (Picture Book Biography)

Resource:  Edmunds, K.M., & Bauserman, K.L. (2006, February). What Teachers Can Learn About Reading Motivation Through Conversations With Children. The Reading Teacher, 59(5), 414–424

©2010 by Dawn Little for Literacy Toolbox. All Rights Reserved.  All Amazon links are affiliatelinks and may result in my receiving a small commission. This is at no additional cost to you.

Book Buddies: Pairing Fiction and Informational Texts to Motivate Readers

One way to motivate readers is to provide children with informational texts that match a fiction book they may enjoy reading.  Or vice versa.  Mary Pope Osborne provides informational guides that correspond with her fiction books in her series of Magic Tree House Books (Magic Tree House Boxed Set, Books 1-4: Dinosaurs Before Dark, The Knight at Dawn, Mummies in the Morning, and Pirates Past Noon), perfect for early readers.  At the preschool age, especially, we tend to read more fiction to our children.  Yet, children tend to crave basic information about topics as well.  I like to pair fiction reading with informational reading.  By reading aloud a fiction book and following up with an informational read aloud, parents can meet both needs of their child.  Sometimes, you may want to read the informational text first to build background knowledge of the topic.  To extend the learning beyond reading, I often pair a craft or activity that complements the topic we are reading about.

“Book Buddies” with corresponding activities:

The Snowy Day by Ezra Jack Keats and The Story of Snow: The Science of Winter’s Wonder by Mark Cassino

Activity:  Put plastic doll feet in black paint and place on white paper to make footprints in the snow

Smash! Crash! (Jon Scieszka’s Trucktown) by Jon Scieszka and Big Book of Trucks by Caroline Bingham

Activity: Take small toy trucks and run the wheels through paint.  Place the wheels all over a sheet of paper for a “Things that Go” piece of artwork.  Try to find cars and trucks with different treads.

My Garden by Kevin Henkes and Let’s Go Gardening: A Young Person’s Guide to the Garden by Ursula Kruger

Activity:  Place soil inside a large plastic, see through bag.  Place seeds in the soil and spray water inside the bag.  Tape the bag to a window that receives sun.  Monitor the new plant that grows.   

Would you like to purchase pre-made Book Buddy Bags?  Each bag comes with a fiction and nonfiction text, a hands-on activity and a resource guide for parents.  Book Buddy Bags are perfect for gifts, homeschool activities, and travel!

Do you have innovative ways to encourage kids (specifically reluctant readers) to read?  I would love to hear them!

©2010 by Dawn Little for Literacy Toolbox. All Rights Reserved.  All Amazon links are affiliate links and may result in my receiving a small commission. This is at no additional cost to you.

Real World Reading with Preschoolers

Created by Susan Stephenson of The Book Chook

A few weeks ago I read a column in the Washington Post by Jay Matthews.  He lamented about how restrictive reading lists are for middle and high school students and how they haven’t really changed from when he was in high school, in other words there is very little nonfiction on the reading lists!  Mathews stated, “Educators say non-fiction is more difficult than fiction for students to comprehend. It requires more factual knowledge, beyond fiction’s simple truths of love, hate, passion and remorse. So we have a pathetic cycle. Students don’t know enough about the real world because they don’t read non-fiction and they can’t read non-fiction because they don’t know enough about the real world.”

As an educator, I have heard colleagues say how non-fiction is more difficult than fiction for students to comprehend, as Mr. Matthews stated.  My answer always was, “We need to teach them how to read nonfiction.  We need to expose students to the joys of reading nonfiction.”  After all, that’s our job as educators, isn’t it?  But, it’s not just an educator’s job.  Our children actually spend way more time outside of school than in school, so really, teaching our children falls on us as parents as well.

In my opinion, it’s never too early to introduce nonfiction texts into our children’s lives.  Perhaps if we begin immersing our children in nonfiction as preschoolers (when they have a natural curiosity for the world around them and they are full of energy for learning!), they will grow up with a natural love for learning and passion for reading.  And really, the earlier we introduce nonfiction into our children’s lives the easier it becomes for them to understand how to read it.  Maybe we can begin to break the “pathetic cycle” and create a generation of readers who enjoy nonfiction!

So here I have for you just a few ways you can integrate nonfiction into your preschooler’s life:

1. Read Aloud Nonfiction Texts – Anytime your preschooler shows an interest in a particular topic, provide nonfiction books on that topic.  When you read informational texts aloud to your child (and you don’t have to read nonfiction from cover to cover!), you are building his/her background knowledge.
2. Expose Your Child to Real World Nonfiction Print – Provide real-world nonfiction text for pretend play.  For example, if your child is pretending to be a waiter or work in a restaurant, have some take-out menus on hand for him to use.  If your child is playing post office, provide him with some junk mail to sort.  This can easily turn into a math activity as well.  Kids can sort the mail by color or size.  When your child turns your family room into a waiting room at the doctor or dentist office, provide magazines and newspapers for him.
3. Introduce Text Features If your child has a particular question about a topic, use that opportunity to discuss and show your child a few text features of nonfiction texts.  Perhaps he wants to know what a specific dinosaur eats; demonstrate how you can use the table of contents or the index to try to locate the answer quickly, rather than reading through the whole book.  If you come upon a word that you know your child will have difficulty understanding, demonstrate how to use a glossary.  If there isn’t a glossary, explain to your child what the word means.  Briefly, explain how we read differently for different purposes.
4. Provide Hands-on Experiences A combination of texts and real-life or hands-on experiences is most powerful for learning.  You can use this three-step process to incorporate nonfiction texts into your preschooler’s reading repertoire.  Through these steps you will build your child’s background knowledge (essential to comprehending texts):

• Select a text based on a topic that interests your child.
• Hands-On/Read World – Prior to reading, provide an opportunity for your child to have a hands-on experience of some sort related to the topic.  Utilize the outside world as much as possible (outdoors in general, museums, special exhibits, etc.)
• Read Aloud -Read aloud the text asking questions as you read.  Provide explanations if you believe your child’s comprehension may be breaking down.
• Connect – Draw comparisons between the experience the child had and the text. How are they alike? How are they different? Help your child make connections.

Reading nonfiction texts with preschoolers provides a natural connection to their own curiosities about the world.   Having background knowledge about topics helps children comprehend what they read.  By building upon the world knowledge of your preschooler now, you are setting a foundation that will only serve to guide them when they begin reading on their own.

What if we begin with our youngest learners?  What are other ways we can introduce nonfiction into the lives of preschoolers?

Parts of this post were originally written as a guest post on No Time For Flash Cards in August 2009

Please note that this post is part of the Share a Story-Shape a Future Literacy Blog Tour, which is being hosted at The Reading Zone today with the topic, Just the Facts: The Nonfiction Book Hook.  Thank you for stopping by!  I hope you visit again soon!

©2010 by Dawn Little for Literacy Toolbox. All Rights Reserved.  All Amazon links are affiliate links and may result in my receiving a small commission. This is at no additional cost to you.

Interactive Informational Read Alouds with Preschoolers

In my opinion, it’s never too early to introduce informational texts into our children’s lives.  If you think about it, when your child was a baby, you probably read aloud concept books (types of animals, colors, shapes, numbers, letters, etc.).  That was your child’s first introduction to informational texts.  But, as your child becomes preschool age, you may want to consider introducing more complex informational text and even begin introducing  a few text features.

I began by asking my three year old if she would like to learn more about frogs and showed her Time For Kids: Frogs! I like to use this line of informational books because they are written at a level for a first or second grader to read independently, which make perfect read alouds for your younger children.  We looked at the cover and she pointed out that it was a red eyed tree frog.  I explained that we were going to read a book that is informational.  Then I asked her if she knew what that meant.  She said no, so I explained that an informational book is one that gives us true information.  Then I opened to the Table of Contents and explained to her what that was.  I said, “A table of contents is helpful when we read informational books because it can tell us where to look if we want to read about a specific topic.”  I read the “chapters” aloud to her and asked her which one she wanted to learn more about.  She decided on “Chapter 4: Are Frogs in Trouble?”  We looked at the page number and she told me which page to turn to.  The chapter was only three pages long.  I read it aloud and asked her questions about the information on each page.  Specifically we discussed vocabulary, because there was a lot of vocabulary in those three short pages (poisonous, camouflage, habitats, and extinction).  We talked about what each word meant.  We then looked at the back of the book and noticed a glossary (Words to Know).  We were able to find two of the vocabulary words back there with definitions which confirmed the definitions I gave her.

This whole experience took a quick fifteen minutes and I was able to sneak some learning in with our reading.  I don’t expect that my preschooler picked up on a whole lot of the learning points I was making, but this was the first time we read an informational book with the specific purpose of looking for text features (though she didn’t know that!).  I think as we begin to read more informational books with this purpose in mind, she will quickly pick up on and be able to tell me about specific text features.

Happy Reading!

©2010 by Dawn Little for Literacy Toolbox. All Rights Reserved.  All Amazon links are affiliate links and may result in my receiving a small commission. This is at no additional cost to you.

We-View Wednesday: The Bones You Own by Becky Baines

I’d like to begin a new weekly link here at Literacy Toolbox.  It’s called We-View Wednesday and basically it’s a parent/child review of a book (as in “we” review it together).  I don’t make it a habit to review books here, but if I come across books that I think you and your child will like, I will certainly share them!  I started to think about how I could involve my children in the process and this is what I came up with!  We read all the time and I think asking kids what they think about a book is just as important as reading to them.  Kids need to understand that they may not always like a book and that’s OK (especially if they are school age, they may feel uncomfortable sharing their true feelings for fear of upsetting an adult).  Asking children to share their opinion of a book also begins to build their critical thinking skills.  Of course, your child’s age will determine how much of  a review you may get out of him or her.

So, since I am VERY new at this whole process, I would like to open it up to you all!  If you are interested in participating in this weekly event, please leave a comment.  If you have any suggestions or ideas, please share them!  I have a three year old and a seven year old, so I will attempt to alternate the we-views between the two.  This one is by my seven year old – he didn’t have much to say, but did pick up on text features!

Published by National Geographic Kids, ZigZag: The Bones You Own is a fantastic informational book for young readers.  Combining labels, photographs, colorful pages and varied font sizes, this book brings bones to life for the preschool and early reader set.  Providing just enough detail to entice the reader, but not overwhelm, this book is another great informational text brought to you by National Geographic.

What did you like about the book?

Seven Year Old We-View:  I liked how the photographs show you real bones.  The X-rays were cool, too!

©2010 by Dawn Little for Literacy Toolbox. All Rights Reserved.  All Amazon links are affiliate links and may result in my receiving a small commission. This is at no additional cost to you.