What to do with your nonfiction?

(Found this unpublished from 23 Jul 2022 – no idea why I didn’t publish it!)

Just as an aside – I’ve been having the most fantastic summer since I don’t know when – well definitely way before covid with reunification with my children after one and two years respectively as well as with so many friends from around the world that our home is nearly needing a booking calendar – such a wonderful thing! I’ve been trying to avoid my computer and work as much as possible, but I had to work on a questionnaire for possible participation on a possible book on “Innovative Marketing, Branding & Community Engagement Programmes Amongst Leading National, Public, and Academic Libraries Worldwide” so I decided it was time to round of this series of three posts on nonfiction (see parts one: “Waves of nonfiction” and two: “Nonfiction’s right to exist“)

If you build it will they come?

As discussed previously it takes considerable time, effort and resources to build and maintain a good nonfiction collection. But the existence thereof does not presuppose its use. Just as we cannot assume that the fact as our students have laptops they know how to use them (the digital native myth) so too we cannot assume that teachers and students know how to get the most out of a nonfiction collection just because they can read. In fact it’s something that I’ve had to learn as a teacher librarian and something I’m still consistently engaging in and learning more about.

I’m going to highlight a few things that have helped me in my learning.

Reading nonfiction (Notice and Note)

Probably the most transformational book I read on helping students to scaffold their reading of nonfiction and be able to develop the critical skills they need to navigate today’s information society was Kylene Beers “Reading Nonfiction”. It’s not only helped my thinking about reading nonfiction but also the approach of every teacher who has allowed me to eulogise the approach and incorporate it into their teaching.

The signposts consist of five items to look out for in a text and how to recognise them and approaches to thinking about the texts. It goes beyond the usual acronyms for assessing the reliability and credibility of a text into some pretty good meta-cognition and thinking skills. The signposts are:

• Contrasts and Contradictions
• Absolute and Extreme Language
• Numbers and Stats
• Quoted Words
• Word Gaps

The way I usually introduce them to students is through a workshop where I give them a Newsela article – my favourite is “How now digital cow” which I like as it includes all the elements and because it’s fun and from my motherland. Using a Newsela article allows me to also have the article available at a number of different levels so it can be accessed by all students no matter their reading / English level.

I print it out, explain the signposts briefly and students in groups of 5 each get a copy to read and a different coloured highlighters to highlight the text pertaining to the signpost they’re looking at. They read the text with a particular interest in “their” signpost. They can then defend their choice in their group and meet up with students in other groups with the same signpost to compare. An alternative is to have the signpost questions on posters and students read the article and then do a poster walk and write their findings after reading the article on the posters. I’m not going to link to any resources on TpT or other sites besides that of the publisher because unfortunately this is one of the most plagiarised and abused resource in the educational community. So I’d encourage you to purchase copies and read the book because it’s more than just a bunch of nice posters and bookmarks.

Elements of nonfiction

Now here is where a great many people are going to cry foul and say “not true”, but I’m afraid it is. Most students do no know the elements that comprise nonfiction, and even if given a list of the names of the elements cannot correctly identify them in a nonfiction book. There are 22 features that I identified and teach to students using the very simple technique of taking a nonfiction book and taking pictures of the elements and adding them to a google slide – see this

Once students understand the elements of nonfiction in print you can start relating those to their digital counterparts, making links between informational ecosystem – eBooks, physical books, videos, databases,

Here are some ideas on ways to promote your nonfiction collection from librarian Kerry O’Malley Cerra. Besides that I’ve found bringing some new and exciting books to any meeting or event – not just planning meetings but also coffee mornings, parent-teacher conferences, PD, etc along with a mobile scanner so people can check them out immediately works really well. This blog by Melissa Stewart is well worth subscribing to for great ideas and also thoughts about the relevance of nonfiction and it’s place in the lives of our students. The SLJ has a section called “nonfiction notions” that addresses new book reviews and how to use nonfiction.