Students use organizational features from nonfiction texts by creating a poster depicting the local school environment. This activity integrates science and language arts. Headings, fonts, sidebars, borders, backgrounds, captions, labels, diagrams, charts, tables, photos and illustrations are areas students work with in creating their posters. Students work in groups of three to gather and record information about the school environment. Animals, plants, places and objects found around the school are to be included. Students can use poster board paper or butcher paper if available.
This activity incorporates social studies into language arts. Choose one article from the newspaper or from a magazine. Distribute copies of the article to students. Provide students with a list of text organization features. Have students work in pairs to identify text features from the article handouts. Direct students to label the features on the article handouts with their partners. As an extension activity, assign students the task of choosing an article from the newspaper and labeling the text features.
Students will read a text that has the organizational features deleted. The passage should be nonfiction. Students read the passage and add appropriate text features. Students follow up with a written description of how and why they chose the features added. In selecting the passage, the teacher chooses one with several features -- the more the better. An original copy of the text will be presented after students complete the activity for comparison and self-evaluation.
For this activity students form groups of three. Each student is directed to bring in one piece of nonfiction text from the newspaper or from a magazine the night before the activity. Each group makes a list of the text features identified in the three pieces of text. The groups come together and discuss the features identified. The teacher writes out student responses. Once the list is complete, students identify the purpose or purposes of each feature.