Nonfiction Text Features

In Mrs. Essenburg's class we have been reading and learning about nonfiction. What is nonfiction?

There are lots of different types of nonfiction, such as books about animals, sports, history, biography, or different states or countries.

Mrs. Essenburg loves nonfiction books about history!

Authors write nonfiction in a different way than they write fiction. Authors use special text features to help the reader understand the facts they are reading about.

What are text features?

Text features are things like captions, which tell what a pictures is about.

 A text feature might also be a heading, which explains what the section of text is about.

Don't forget about the Table of Contents! The Table of Contents lets us know what each of the chapters are about and also what page they are on.

A map is one of Mrs. Essenburg's favorite text feature, because if we are reading about a place it shows us exactly where that place is.

Don't forget about bold-faced words. Bold-faced words are words that the author thinks are important, so the author makes them darker than the other words. 

Charts and graphs are very important text features. Charts and graphs organize information in a way that is very easy to read. 

 Glossaries are the last text feature we will talk about here. A glossary is like a very small dictionary just for the nonfiction book you are reading. A glossary tells you what the bold-faced words mean and how to pronounce the word.

Those are just some of the text features authors use to make nonfiction books more interesting and to help the reader understand the facts in the book.

Check out this great video Jordan and Cordelia made about the text features of this nonfiction book about animals!




We practiced using text features.  In Social Studies we were learning about the Midwest Region. After we read about the different food, fun activities, and music of the Midwest we used the Pic Collage app to make headings and captions about what we read. Here are some examples of what we made.

Here are Korin's and Mason W.'s headings and captions about food in the Midwest.

Here are Andrew's and Kaitlyn's headings and captions about things people do for fun in the Midwest.

Here are Sydey's, Riley's, and Addison's headings and captions about things people might do for fun in the Midwest.

Here are Omar and Julian's headings and captions about some food you might find in the Midwest.

Here are Dorothy and Jordan's headings and captions about the music you might hear in the Midwest.

Here are Lainie and Selena's headings and captions about the music in the Midwest.

Without text features nonfiction books would not be nearly as interesting! 

Think about the nonfiction books you like to read. What type of nonfiction do you like the best? Which text feature do you find helps you the most to understand the book? Why is that text feature so helpful? Please comment below and let us know. Make sure your comment is a Quality Comment.