Nonfiction seems to be the genre of book that gets the least amount of recognition. However, as it turns out in our class, we can’t seem to get enough of it! We love getting to choose nonfiction books and learn new things about topics of our choice.

Reading nonfiction is a bit different from reading fiction. In nonfiction, we don’t always have to read the text from cover to cover. Instead, we may only choose to read certain sections of the book, depending on what we want to learn about. Using the table of contents and index can help us with this.

In fiction, we read the whole book because the story has a beginning, middle, and an ending. We would miss out on important information about the characters and plot if we only read certain chapters.

We’ve learned about many of the text features that nonfiction uses including:

• table of contents
• index
• glossary
• photographs or pictures with captions
• diagrams
• a change in font style (bold words, highlighted words)
• and many more!

When reading nonfiction, we need to slow down and use the text features to help us understand what we are reading. Have a look below at some of our classmates sharing something new they learned from their nonfiction book.