Resources for Educators: Questions to Help Students Understand Nonfiction Texts

More and more, teachers are requesting educational resources that go beyond traditional teachers guides and activity sheets. So while I do still have those kinds of materials on my website, I’m also offering resources that delve deeply into the nonfiction reading and writing process from an author’s point of view. 

Some of these resources focus on books I’ve written and describe various stages of my creative process in detail, while others provide more general information  and highlight books written by a wide variety of nonfiction authors.  

On Mondays this year, I’m going to be sharing some of these resources and providing ideas for how they might be used in the classroom. Today, I’m going to focus on a document entitled Questions to Help Students Understand Nonfiction Texts, which you can access by clicking on the Nonfiction Reading Resources icon.

This document includes lists of questions that can help elementary students at various grade levels examine and evaluate the elements of nonfiction writing, including main idea and supporting details, beginnings and endings, text features, text structures, voice, organization, writing style, point of view, strong verbs, rich language, sensory details, and more.