1. Tapping the Power of Nonfiction
Bend 1 Session 1
Read-Aloud: Reading with Engagement and Fascination Right from the Introduction

2. Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All-American Meal
Today you are diving into a new unit of study focused on reading nonfiction texts!
You will become experts on really fascinating topics!
You will now take on the challenge of reading longer nonfiction chapter books.
The class read-aloud:
Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All-American Meal

3. When nonfiction readers start a text, they first orient themselves to the text and anticipate what it might teach.
Look at the cover.
Review the back page.
Review the table of contents.
Read the front matter(preludes, prefaces, prologues, forewords, introductory chapters or paragraphs).

4. To orient yourselves to a larger nonfiction book than to a short article takes more work!
To figure out what the text is going to be about, you need to:
Think about what’s fascinating.
Wonder about what things you do not quite understand yet.

8. During independent reading time today:
Find a spot in the room where you will meet and talk with your groups.
When you get your book, just jump right into all the good stuff at the start of the book: front and back covers, table of contents, front matter or introductory chapter if the book does not have other front matter
Notice surprising details that spark questions in your minds.

9. Time to Share!
Tell your club members any interesting details you came across and the type of thinking you have been doing about those details.

10. Tapping the Power of Nonfiction
Bend 1 Session 2
Generating Questions and Ideas that Spark Rich Club Conversations

11. With your group, brainstorm things you already know about what book clubs do!

12. Teaching Point:
The quality of your book-club conversations has everything to do with what you bring to talk about. Before you can have a really rich conversation, you’ve got to notice something significant, something provocative, and then mull it over in your mind, doing some thinking to prepare.

13. To have rich conversations that help you think deeply about your reading, you have to prepare!
Notice fascinating parts and then mull those parts over- generating ideas and questions and formulating some thinking about them.
You have to have a book club conversation in your mind to prepare for the conversation in your club.
We will practice this by reading a section a bit further on in Fast Food Nation, where we learn how McDonald’s got its start.
Push yourselves to notice fascinating parts that will lead to rich talk.

14. How we prepared for richer conversations:
Noticed fascinating parts
Mulled those fascinating parts over
Asked questions and grew ideas about that part (had a book club
conversation in your mind)

15. You try!
Look over the text and think about a part you could talk off of.
Mull that part over in your mind. Ask questions about it, consider possible answers, and grow some ideas from that part.
Start a group discussion: One group member starts by sharing his or her thoughts by saying, ‘Let me catch you up on my thinking so far…’
After, everyone else in the group should be ready to talk long about what that group member shared.
Try to keep growing your thinking about that one part.
Remember to use phrases like: ‘Maybe it could be…’ or ‘Perhaps it could be…’

17. As a club, make a plan for your reading:
Decide how many pages you will read today and if there is anything particular you want to pay attention to as you read.
You will have 30 minutes to read, so you will probably read around 20 pages.
Keep in mind all you know about making the most of your nonfiction reading!

18. It’s book-club time- come prepared, talk about the text, reference pages in the book, and run your own book-club meeting so that no one person dominates the conversation.
You learned that your conversations will be richer if you do some significant thinking in advance to prepare.
***Take a minute right now to prepare for your conversation- you might use Post-its to flag a page in the text you want to reference, or you might jot down a few points you want to make during your conversation.

19. Tapping the Power of Nonfiction
Bend 1 Session 3
Determining Central Ideas

21. It is VERY important to pay attention to central ideas (big points) the author is making when trying to learn everything you can about a topic.
Turn and Talk: What are some strategies you use that help you determine central ideas?
Sometimes the author comes right out and says it in a pop-out sentence (first or last sentences in a section, sometimes the middle)
Look at headings/subheadings

22. Teaching Point:
Nonfiction readers work hard to determine a text’s central ideas. One way they do this is to notice important details in the text and then look across those details and think, ‘How do these details fit together?’

24. Imagine I found these details in a text:
You, the reader, have to invent words to describe (convey) how these details fit together- you CANNOT find the big idea in the text itself- in the pictures of these three items. The big idea comes from your mind!
It is not hard to do if you ask yourself, ‘How do these details fit together?’

25. How do these details fit together?
In longer texts, it is not always quite so obvious how details fit together. You will also have details like these:
How do these details fit together?

26. How do these details fit together?
** Push yourself past saying these are just animals!

27. How to use this strategy across a larger text:
Read a section.
Be on the lookout for details that seem important.
Let’s try it!
Listen to our read aloud.
Hold up a finger each time you hear a detail that sounds important.
Now ask, ‘How do these details fit together?’

28. Key Details:
Influencing elementary-schoolers is really important for the soda companies
Eight-year-olds are ideal customers for soda companies
Soda companies sell a Coke for &1.29 that only costs them 9 cents to make
*** These are important details, like the salt shaker, plate and fork.
Develop a central idea:
Now the question is, ‘How do these details fit together?’
Work with a partner to determine the central idea the author might be getting at in this section.
Example of a Central Idea:
Fast food companies market their products to kids so they can make more money.

29. REMEMBER:
To get as smart as you can about a topic, you have to grasp what the author is teaching, what the central ideas are in the text.
Sometimes the central idea stands out and is easy to find in pop-out sentences and headings, but often it is hidden and you have to locate key details and ask, ‘How do these details fit together?’
**Use the sticky notes on your desk to mark parts where you identify possible central ideas.
As you read today:
There is lots of work you can draw on. (Review the anchor chart.)
Be alert to the thought-provoking parts of your text, and also work to develop some initial details about what the text is teaching.
***First, make a plan with your club for what you will read and what you will think about.

30. There is one more thing that book clubs do when they meet:
Time to share!
There is one more thing that book clubs do when they meet:
Book club members hold each other accountable!
Since the surefire way to become a better reader is to read a lot, you should be reading around 20 pages in school each day and another 20 pages at home. That equals about 40 pages a day!
When you meet with your club, check in about the volume of reading you have already done- use your reading logs to help.
If your club is not reading 40 pages a day, spend part of your time brainstorming what you can do to support each other.
If you club is already meeting that goal, brainstorm what you could do to read even more.

31. Tapping the Power of Nonfiction
Bend 1 Session 4
Rethinking Initial Ideas

32. Remember when we did a deep study of characters in our books and we realized our initial ideas about characters were insufficient, since our characters tended to reveal themselves over time?
Our first ideas about our characters did not take the whole character into account- we had to be alert to new details and ready to rethink our initial ideas!
The same holds true for the longer nonfiction books you are reading.

33. Teaching Point:
In complicated nonfiction books, just like in complicated stories, central ideas only reveal themselves over time. Experienced readers, therefore, are alert to new details, and they rethink their first ideas in light of new evidence.

34. Yesterday we studied some images of animals with their babies, and you said one central idea might be that animal parents take care of their babies.
Imagine we read on in that same text, alert for new details that might somehow fit with that central idea and we come across these additional details….

35. What do these new details suggest
What do these new details suggest? How could you revise the central idea to incorporate these new details?

36. In Summary:
Just like in the complicated stories we read earlier in the year, central ideas often reveal themselves over time.
We had to hold our initial ideas loosely and rethink them in light of the new details in the text.

37. Let’s try this work!
Yesterday, we jotted a possible central idea: Fast food companies market to kids to make more money.
Since this text is complicated, let’s hold onto that initial idea loosely, and read on alert to new details that make us rethink our initial idea.
A central idea might be that fast food companies take advantage of people to make money, whether it’s kids or low-income workers.

39. Get ready to read independently:
Before heading off to read, make a plan with your club:
How many pages will you read in the next thirty minutes? Probably around 20.
What kind of reading work will pay off for you?

40. When you revise your thinking constantly, it is hard to remember what central ideas your book is teaching.
Tips:
If you are reading a book you cannot write in, you could put your central ideas on Post-its or set up pages in your reader’s notebook to track how your thinking changes: maybe a boxes-and-bullets.
If you are reading a copy of a book that is yours, mark up key details and jot about possible central ideas in the margins of the pages.
If you are reading a digital copy, you can decide if you want to take notes digitally or in your notebook.

41. Tapping the Power of Nonfiction
Bend 1 Session 5
Learning from the Stories Embedded in Nonfiction Texts

42. Some nonfiction books are loaded with stories!
It will seem like your books is teaching a bunch of facts about the topic and then all of a sudden there’s a story!
And then after the story, the books may go back to teaching a bunch of facts.
Russell Freedman, a nonfiction author based out of NYC once said, ‘A nonfiction writer is a storyteller who has taken an oath to tell the truth’.
Stories are a big way nonfiction writers get across the true information of their topic.
So paying attention to the stories embedded, matter.

43. Teaching Point:
Nonfiction readers know that authors embed stories for a reason. Nonfiction readers therefore pay careful attention to the stories to determine how they carry an author’s central ideas.

44. Embedded story in Fast Food Nation: ‘Throughput’
Let’s read this section, alert to how this story could carry some of the central ideas in the text.
One central idea we already generated was that fast food companies take advantage of people to make money, whether it’s kids or low-income workers.

46. In Summary:
We approached a story embedded in our nonfiction text differently than a fiction reader would, trying to learn all we could from it.
We noticed what the story was teaching, and considered how it could fit with the central ideas of the text.
This also led us to discover another possible central idea in the text.

47. In the books you are reading now, there might be a dominant story that comes up throughout the book or small excerpts of stories that pop up from time to time.
Either way, pay close attention to those stories because authors embed them in the text for a reason.
- Often, they help to illustrate the central ideas in a text.

48. Book club conversations:
What do you think you could read tonight that relates to your topic? What could you watch? Search for online?
Use the first few minutes of your book club conversation to brainstorm a brief list of where you could look to find more about your topic.
Then, launch into deeper conversations about your books.

49. Tapping the Power of Nonfiction
Bend 1 Session 6
Ideas Have Roots: Tracing How Ideas Are Developed across a Text

50. I noticed that a lot of you are talking about this or that part of the text as if it is not part of the larger text.
You put blinders on and talk about an event or idea and you do not talk about how that event or idea threads through the whole text.
In other words, I hear you talking about just the most recent place in the book where that idea or person comes up and not about the backdrop.

51. Teaching Point:
Nonfiction readers know that even ideas, events, and people that initially might seem insignificant are often linked to central ideas in the text. One way to think about this is by asking, ‘How might this part fit with what came before?’

52. In Summary:
I identified something that felt insignificant.
I pushed myself to see how it might link to central ideas in the text.
I identified other parts that might fit it.
I studied those parts thinking, ‘How might this part fit with what came before?’

53. Challenges:
To find parts that somehow go together.
To think about HOW they go together.
Usually an event, idea, or person is connected to many parts of the book like that mangrove root system.
We read this section about soda a couple of days ago when we were first beginning to figure out the central idea.
- Now that we zeroed in on that part about toys and fast food, how does that change how we see the section about soda?
With your book clubs, study this new part thinking, ‘How might the part that we just read together fit with this part that came before?’

54. In addition to the other reading work you will do today, will you and your club consider how parts of your book that might seem less significant could fit together to lead to central ideas?
You might want to go back and flag parts where that idea showed up earlier in the text.

55. Time to Share!
Open up your reading notebooks or your book to a page where you did some writing about reading you are proud of.
To kick off your club conversations today, take a few minutes to study the writing about reading your club mates have been doing and give them some feedback.
Give feedback on if they are:
Keeping their writing brief
Tracking central ideas
Revising ideas over time
Decide if you would rather study one notebook together and give feedback or rotate notebooks or books and jot feedback on Post-it notes.

56. Tapping the Power of Nonfiction
Bend 1 Session 7
Self-Assessing and Goal Setting

57. Teaching Point:
I want to remind you that whenever you want to outgrow yourself, it helps to pause and take stock. One way readers do this is they look over all they’ve learned and ask, ‘Am I doing these things when the book calls for them?’ Then, they set goals to further lift the level of their work.

59. Time to set some goals!
Choose a part of the checklist you would both like to study first.
Once you have that part in mind, spend a minute or two revisiting your book and writing about reading.
As you do, ask yourself, ‘Am I doing this work when the book calls for it?’
After, be prepared to share what you find, along with your evidence with your partner.
Remember:
Whenever you want to get better at something, it pays to pause and take stock.
You want to ask yourself, ‘Am I doing all the things I could be doing when the book calls for it?’
Then you can set goals to make your work even better.
Before you head off today, spend a few minutes self-assessing your work, then pick up your books and continue reading with your goals in mind.

60. Another kind of work nonfiction readers do is take a topic and then read a bunch of texts on that topic, building up their knowledge on that topic as they go- that is the kind of nonfiction reading we will start tomorrow, in the next bend of our unit.
There are a few articles and trade books set up as stations around the room- you will not have time to visit all the stations, so make sure to visit the ones you think you are most interested in.
Scan the stations and ask yourself, ‘Is this a topic I want to study further?’