Informational texts in Kindergarten

We are finishing up on our reading unit all about informational text.  One of the many lessons I taught was about what the author of the text does to help its readers understand the topic and how they use many features to help organize their information.  We made a list of the features they use and then together we looked through a few texts to see if the books had any of those features.  

Afterwards, I sent my students off to their tables with a basket of books to look through and search for these features on their own.

I gave them each a small stack of post-its and let them go to town and label the features they found.  We found bold words, table of contents, captions, glossary, index and headings to name a few! 

Then to wrap up our feature search, I called out a feature and the kids opened a book to a page they marked that had that feature and held it up for all to see.

Sorry it's so blurry...I just wanted you to notice the yellow sticky to mark author's features.

The next day, we switched our focus from author to illustrator.  We talked about how the author and illustrator work together to write the book and that just like the author, an illustrator uses features to help the reader understand the topic better.   We listed the features and then, just like the day before, they helped me search through my book(s) to find the features we had listed.  Afterward, we went back to our tables and used the same books, but different colored post-its to mark the illustrator's features.  The students found features like labels, cut-aways, photographs and diagrams. 

Labeling a caption

Labeling labels

Finding a cut-away to label

Afterwards we shared the features we found just like the previous days' lesson.

What an easy way for me to informally observe who understood and who needed some re-teaching!

The students had a great time and were actively engaged.  A great hands-on way to have them show what they had learned!

Now, we are on to comparing fiction and information and discussing features that are the 

same and different.

I love teaching about informational text.  This unit will really help my students when we do our informational writing next week!  Looking forward to seeing how they use what we learned during reading to help them with their writing!