Nonfiction writing is based on facts, real events, and real people. There are many helpful text features found in nonfiction writing. Some common text features are: headings, subheadings, captions, diagrams, time lines, maps, charts, and the glossary.
Below is a humdinger of a video made by Sheriff Yollis and Sheriff Salsich. They hope their video helps you greenhorns learn about about these important reading features!
Mrs. Yollis' class enjoys sharing and learning with other classes. This year, they are QuadBlogging buddies with three other classes! For the next four weeks, these classes will connect and learn about each other.
Here is a fabulous video we made last year explaining how QuadBlogging works! QuadBlogging was invented by @deputymitchell. Learn more about Quadblogging here.
Mrs. Yollis' class will start the process!
* * * * *
Mrs. Yollis' class is an enthusiastic group of third graders. There are twenty-five students in the class, and they live in a suburb of Los Angeles, California. Students enjoy learning and meeting other classroom bloggers. The class maintains two blogs, Mrs. Yollis' Classroom Blog and the Yollis' 366 Project. The 366 project is a daily digital documentation. Anyone, including YOU, can submit a photo of the day. Just email Mrs. Yollis an interesting photo with some text to accompany the shot!
We have two blog mascots, Panda and Beverly. Panda is a polite, punctual, panda who enjoys pole-vaulting. Beverly is big and un-bear-ably cute. Although bears only hibernate in the winter, she seems to go into a deep sleep quite often!
Mrs. Yollis' students have been in school since August 2011, so they have numerous posts in the blog archive.
(An archive is a list of past posts published. Hey, that's alliteration!
The archive is located in the sidebar.)
Here are some class recommendations to help you get to know Mrs. Yollis' bloggers!
Madison recommends that you check out Poly-gone from our 366 Project. Here you will see Mrs. Yollis' new puppy, Buck, helping her grade the geometry tests!
Parsa and Brenden recommend Orange You From California?
They like this post from our class 366 project because it has a pun in
the title. Plus, the fabulous photo was taken by guest photographer,
Mrs. Morris!
✺ Sarah and Kelly recommend another 366 post called Seed Pod or Mr. Green. It features Buck, Mrs. Yollis' new puppy, making a judgement about what to eat.
♥ Ellie recommends a post that features her dad. It is called Fire Safety With Ellie's Dad. This an important post for all to read!
☝ Alyssa and Leila recommend our 100,000 Visitors post! We created a movie to welcome in a new place value position...the hundred thousands place!
Parsa and Brenden are back with one more recommendation. Check out Skyping With 4KM and 4KJ. Learn about Australia and the United States. We look forward to meeting B4 and Skyping with Mr. Salsich's class again!
Sasha thinks that you should check out Google Earth Geometry. See how we investigated our nation's capital, Washington, D.C., while identifying 2 and 3-D features!
⚔ Beverly recommends you check out her post called Beverly's a Pirate! (Do so at your own risk!)
♥Mrs. Yollis' recommends you take a look our student blogs. So far, six students have earned their own blogs by demonstrating responsible work habits and regularly participating in our class blog.
★ Panda recommends that you watch this video. He says you will learn FIVE tips to help you compose a quality comment! Remember it is important to make a good impression when leaving a comment.
Tips for writing a quality comment:
1. Compliment the writer in a specific way. 2. Make a connection. 3. Add relevant information. 4. End with a question if you'd like to start a conversation. 5. Proofread! (Anything underlined in red is probably misspelled.)
We look forward to meeting everyone and getting some conversations going!
Please leave us a comment telling us about yourself!
Today Mrs. Yollis' class traveled across the United States! They didn't really go from the west coast to the east coast, they met their Connecticut blogging buddies via Skype!
Sheriff Yollis and Sheriff Salsich also connect these greenhorns over at the Reading Round-Up!
Parsa and Sasha were our geographers. Here is the great state of Connecticut. What do you noticed about the state? Who are their neighbors? In our atlas, it says that Connecticut is in the New England region of the United States. What does that mean?
Sheriff Yollis and our greeter say a big howdy to the cowboys and cowgirls in Sheriff Salsich's class!
California is the THIRD largest state and has an AREA of 158,706 SQUARE MILES.
The beautiful state flower, the California poppy.
Our winter temperatures are pretty mild compared to Connecticut! Does anyone remember their annual rainfall? How much snow do they get yearly?
Here is Connecticut's state flower, the beautiful mountain laurel. This is a flowering shrub. Sometimes they grow together and form thickets! (What's a thicket?)
Favorite recess games were shared!
Mrs. Yollis' students enjoyed taking notes about their new Connecticut friends.
They got to meet Juan Pablo, the mascot of Mr. Salsich's class...
...they were also introduced to Perezoso, the sloth mascot!
Panda and Beverly were on hand for introductions. As usual, Panda was polite and had something useful to say. Panda said, "Actions speak louder than words." So true, Panda!
Beverly is still in hibernation!
Mia and Sarah have been busy with their AlphaSmart lessons and can already type! Because of their achievement, they were selected to take notes on TodaysMeet!
Here is their transcript! (There are a few repeats because the girls were just learning how to use this new web tool.)
Here are a few of the similarities and differences we noticed. We are trying to learn how to use our new MOBI!
Thank you, Leila, for being a fantastic photographer for the event!
When you take notes on a topic, you look for main headings and details to support those headings.
In addition, you only write down facts.
Mrs. Yollis was going to use the text from the class reading book, but she noticed their Quad-Blogging buddies had a video about Allison's amphibians.
Mrs. Yollis adapted her note taking lesson to Mr. Salsich's student video!
Then we watched it again to listen for main headings.
Then we folded our paper into 4 equal parts. The top part was where we would take notes about All amphibians. The bottom boxes were for individual amphibians. We gathered many details about each amphibian!
Click to enlarge.
Click to enlarge.
Learning from other bloggers is one of the many benefits of educational blogging!
Today Sheriff Yollis and Sheriff Salsich connected the west and east coasts of the United States through Skype!
Ryan and Hannah typed the facts in TodaysMeet, our backchannel.
Sheriff Yollis and Sheriff Salsich circled the wagons at the meeting post.
Miriam and Jaden shared facts about our community.
Here we have collected facts about our community.
Good bye! Happy trails!
Lindsay: I liked how everyone spoke clearly.
Iman: They have way more snow that us. We get zero inches and they get 10 inches annually.
Grace: It was nice speaking with them because we've never seen them in real life. We only know them through our blogs.
Hannah: They have much more rain than us. We only get 14 inches of rain a year and they get 50 inches! (We are very close to being a desert which only get 10 inches of rain per year.)
Jaden: Our winter climates are VERY different! They get snow, and they even have snow days!
Adia: They live closer to the ocean than us and have a lower elevation. We are about 800 feet above sea level and they are only 14 feet.
Finn: They live near the Atlantic Ocean and we are near the Pacific Ocean.
Nicole: Their population is 18,000 and ours is 24,000 people.
Ryan: Their school population is about 100 less than our population. Ours is 611 students.
Amitai: Our community is 13 square miles, while theirs is a vast 50 square miles. (We just learned the word vast. :-)
Nick: We are 34˚ N and they are 41˚ N of the equator.
Alexa: Our summer climate is similar to theirs. We are 60˚ to 90˚ F. However, their summers are sticky and humid.
✩ ★ ✩ ★ ✩ ★ ✩ ★ ✩ ★
Here is the transcript for TodaysMeet from Hannah and Ryan!
Thank you Ben for being our photographer!
Have you ever been to the Atlantic or Pacific coast?
Here is a fantastic VoiceThread by Mr. Salsich's third grade students.
After viewing this VoiceThread, Mrs. Yollis' students looked for an example of a text feature in one of their nonfiction books. (animal report book or biography book)
* * * * *
Here are examples of text features and how they were used!
Ayush said, "I used the table of contents to find information about the blue whale's diet. The chapter was What Do Blue Whales Eat? I learned that one creature the blue whale feeds on is krill."
Ava stated, "The table of contents helped me find out information about the sea turtle's body."
Kayla declared, "The timeline helped me a lot. For example, I learned that in 1872, Susan B. Anthony voted for the presidential election when she was NOT allowed to."
Kendall explained, "I used the table of contents to help me find out why Elizabeth Blackwell decided to be a doctor. In a chapter called A Dream Begins,I found out that a friend told Elizabeth that she should be the first woman doctor."
* * * * *
Paul stated, "I looked in the glossary for the definition for vertebrate which means a creature has a backbone."
Ben explained, "One caption in the book The Picture Life of Franklin Delano Roosevelt told me that in 1943 he met in Teheran, Iran, for a conference with Joseph Stalin and Winston Churchill."
Trent said, "I used the timeline to find that Charles Lindbergh bought his first airplane in 1923."
Kate stated, "The timeline helped me find important dates in Abraham Lincoln's life. For example, in 1960 he was elected president."
* * * * *
Nick declared, " The timeline helped me by remembering JFK's election for president on November 8, 1960."
Jaxon
Richie stated, "The diagram (sketch) helped me understand how the telephone worked."
"The map helped me a whole lot because I had no idea where the boa constrictor lived," said Corey.
* * * * *
Sydney remarked, "I used the glossary and diagram to help me find the fact about the mane of a zebra."
Ethan
Anais said, "I used the table of contents to help me find information about Sacagawea. For example, to find out when she started working for Lewis and Clark, I used the chapter called Hired by Lewis and Clark."
"The table of contents helps me look for information that I need for my cheetah report. One chapter of the table contents I used for was How They Look. I used How They Look for the color of the cheetah," Jollene declared.
* * * * *
Gal declared, "I used a timeline to find that Amelia Earhart became the first person to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean in 1932."
Scarlet said, "I used the glossary to help me find the word trunk. The trunk is used by the elephant to breathe, eat smell, and drink."
Jared declared, "My text feature in my Milton Hershey: Chocolate King book is the index. The cool part about the index is it helps me find the subjects I need and the correct pages. For example, pages 58-61 have information about chocolate."
"In the book Coyote, I found a map that helped me figure out where coyotes live," Caleb explained.
* * * * *
Sam declared, " I used the glossary to find out what the word rosette means. Rosette means a spot or a group of spots that look like a flower."
Moraiya said, "The content help me find that the roadrunner runs through the bushy desert. I found this in Chapter 1."
Aaliyah declared, "The timeline helped me find details about Pocohontas. For example, in 1614, Pocohontas married John Rolfe."
Charlie remarked, "I used a picture to see what a Gila monster looks like."
Posts
