Behind the Books: A Gift for Educators

In March, a Twitter conversation with @mtechman a.k.a. Melissa Techman, the K-5 School Librarian in Charlottesville, VA, led me to write this blog post about nonfiction text features.

And thanks in large part to @mtechman’s RTs of that post, hundreds of educators visited my blog. Thanks, Melissa T.

But that wasn’t the end of the story. In April, I had 10 minutes to present to a room full of Massachusetts Reading Association members at their annual conference. What did I talk about? Nonfiction text features, of course. And nonfiction text structure, too.

I gave out nearly 200 flash drives with the PowerPoint slide shown above (It has just the right proportions for classroom Smart Boards) and a variety of activities that will help elementary students learn about nonfiction text features and nonfiction text structures (cause and effect, compare and contrast, fact and opinion). Boy were those educators excited.

Last week, I presented the same ideas as well as a few new ones to the Nobscot Reading Council at a lovely dinner in Holliston, MA. And I gave out more flash drives. Those educators were excited, too.

Wish you could get ahold of all those materials? Good news. You can. They’re now available on my website. I hope you’ll download them (It’s free and easy!) and use them with your students.

Enjoy!