25 Days of Classrooms: Nonfiction Cafe

This month I am sharing stories from
classrooms in Berwyn South District 100.

Day 2: Nonfiction Cafe with Caroline Colletti (5th, Pershing)

    It happens every year.  We begin the school year with a focus on on fiction, and then magically, around Quarter 2, kids are supposed to switch their brains to informational text.  While some teachers often feel that nonfiction is easier for kids than fiction, it isn't true of all readers.  Also, as you move grades, the complexity of information text grows quite dramatically.  In the primary grades, there are very typical things students can expect to find in nonfiction books.  As they reach intermediate grades, those typical things tend to change.  How can we tackle this?  Just ask Caroline Colletti!

     Caroline sets up a Cafe in her class to help students "taste" books in the different categories we find in nonfiction.  Chef Debbie comes to school that day and serves up some tasty dishes that help students explore the features and structures of nonfiction books written at a 5th grade level.  Some of her specialties? Memoirs, speeches, biographies, historical fiction, science texts, and articles.  Here is her menu:

 

     The classroom comes complete with place settings (that turn into sketchnotes) and name tags, because a seat at this cafe require advance reservations. She gave each dish to the table with time to look at 3 selections from each basket, and discuss the features and structures they found with their tables.  They record their observations on a graphic organizer.

     My advance reservation got me a seat at the table with some very observant readers!  We had a great conversation about the texts we shared, and I was sad to see them head off to their special before we sketchnoted our take-aways.  I had to synthesize our learning by myself, but here are my reflections.

   Thanks for inviting me in, Chef Debbie!  Make sure you tell Ms. Colletti that I had a wonderful time at the cafe.