Comparing Key Ideas and Details in Fiction and Nonfiction
Comparing Key Ideas and Details in Fiction and Nonfiction
Objectives
Students will explore the differences between fiction and nonfiction texts. Students will:
- identify characteristics of fiction and nonfiction.
- distinguish between examples of fiction and nonfiction texts.
Essential Questions
- How do strategic readers create meaning from informational and literary texts?
- What is this text really about?
- How does interaction with text provoke thinking and response?
Vocabulary
- Fiction: Any story that is the product of imagination rather than a documentation of fact. Characters and events may be based on real life, but the story is a creation of the author.
- Nonfiction: Writing that is not fictional; designed to explain, argue, instruct, or describe rather than entertain.
- Literary Elements: The essential techniques used in literature (e.g., characterization, setting, plot, theme).
- Characterization: The method an author uses to reveal characters and their various personalities.
- Inference: A judgment based on reasoning rather than on direct statement in a text.
- Plot: The structure of a story. The sequence in which the author arranges the events in a story.
- Setting: The time and place in which a story unfolds.
- Recount: To retell a story in detail.
Duration
40–90 minutes/1–2 class periods
Prerequisite Skills
Prerequisite Skills haven't been entered into the lesson plan.
Materials
- Lost in the Woods by Carl. R. Sams II. EDCO Publishing, 2005. (Stranger in the Woods or First Snow in the Woods by the same author would also work.)
- Owen & Mzee: The True Story of a Remarkable Friendship by Isabella Hatkoff. Scholastic Press, 2006. (Owen & Mzee: The Language of Friendship or Owen & Mzee: Best Friends by the same author would also work.)
- Mr. Peabody’s Apples by Madonna. Callaway, 2003.
- The above texts were selected because they are clear examples of fiction and nonfiction.
- Alternative books should be clearly fiction or nonfiction to help students practice differentiating between the two. Suggested titles include the following:
- Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs by Judi Barrett. Atheneum, 1982.
- Weather by Lorrie Mack. DK Children, 2004.
Teachers may substitute other books to provide a range of reading and level of text complexity.
- several magazine articles and stories without any illustrations
- chart paper
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02/28/2013