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"The simple truth is that turning students on to nonfiction reading - proving that articles from sources like Popular Science and Gizmodo and National Geographic can be JUST as amazing as The Hunger Games or The Lightning Thief or The Lunar Chronicles - is probably the MOST important contribution that I can make to the academic and intellectual growth of my students. Being exposed to high interest articles from a wide range of fields - space science, biology, chemistry, earth science - might just introduce kids to personal passions and future professions.  Seeing science in action turns what could be just another boring subject in school into an interesting career worth pursuing.  Just as importantly, exposing kids to high interest nonfiction text on a regular basis will build their comfort level with a genre that will increasingly define the reading that they do as middle schoolers, high schoolers and adults. So I'm trying something new this year:  I'm going to use Remind - a free service that allows teachers to send out text and/or email updates to parents and students - to share two or three interesting science current events every week."

"Welcome teachers, librarians, homeschoolers and nonfiction writers! This blog offers innovative resources for teaching science and tips for writing nonfiction."

"Recent Free NonFiction Kindle Books (May 31, 2012) "

Tony Stead is an Australian educator who has taught in elementary schools and lectured at the University of Melbourne. He is the past president of the Melbourne Chapter of the Australian Reading Association and the author of many publications. His latest include Is That a Fact?: Teaching Nonfiction Writing and the video series Time For Nonfiction. which highlights his recent work with several teachers at the Manhattan New School.

"Something that bothers me so much is when I read articles that talk about how libraries are becoming makerspaces.  Our makerspace is one component of the participatory culture that runs through our space.  Anyone who knows my story knows that my point of entry into the Maker Movement was through literacy, so for me, literacy and making have always gone hand in hand.   When I began as the Library Media Specialist at New Milford High School, I walked into a library that was similar to many school libraries in older schools.  It was very traditional looking, with tall stacks and lots and lots of books that students simply did not check out, nor have an interest in.  The collection was out of date and had not been weeded in decades.  One of the tasks for me was to weed the books.  During that weeding process, I decided that traditional nonfiction that made it through the weeding process would be sent to classrooms to build up their classroom research libraries.  I decided to keep any memoirs or narrative nonfiction that we had in our collection, since those were the kinds of books I discovered so many of our students did enjoy reading and would check out.  Amongst the vast fiction collection, we did find a few gems, but mostly we either discarded books that were no longer relevant to our students, gave them to classrooms who wanted them, or to individual students who showed an interest.  In the end, I was able to preserve just a few shelves of books.  As a result, I was tasked with rebuilding our collection."

"Making animated videos is a great way for students to bring their written stories to life on screen. Those could be fiction or nonfiction stories. Some nonfiction animated video topics include making a video to illustrate a historical event, making biographies, and explaining complex concepts in simple animations like Common Craft does. In the fiction realm you might have students make an adaptation of a favorite story or an animation of their own creative writing. Whichever direction you choose, the following five tools offer good ways for students of all ages to make their own animated videos."

"Newsela is an innovative way to build reading comprehension with nonfiction that's always relevant: daily news. It's easy and amazing."

"Current events articles are a great choice for informational text.  Students can learn all about news stories and practice reading skills at the same time.  If you have a class full of students reading at different levels you'll definitely want to check out Newsela.  This fantastic site contains brand new articles everyday.  The best part is that you can change the Lexile level of each article by clicking on the one that's right for your students.  You can share the same article at a few different levels with each of your reading groups."

"Zip! Zap! Zoom! My library is anything BUT quiet during our recess time. Of course students are visiting and sharing about books they love. But they've also had a great time exploring iPads this year. Students read picture book apps, explore nonfiction book apps, and play math games to practice basic math facts."

"Students need to have a balance of literature and informational text.  If you're looking for sites that include nonfiction passages or high-interest articles here are a few worth exploring:"

GREATER ESTIMATIONS by Bruce Goldstone (Holt) FUN WITH ROMAN NUMERALS by David Adler, illustrated by Edward Miller III (Holiday House) SPOT THE DIFFERENCES by Steven Rosen (Scholastic)

"I've shared some of the reasons why I think News-O-Matic is a great choice for integrating informational text into your everyday instruction.  Not only is nonfiction reading an important skill, but students can learn how to become informed citizens by interacting with news stories on a daily basis.  News-O-Matic has developed a list of different ways to use this tool in the classroom, check out their top seven:"

"Science Today is a terrific free app for iPads that brings quality informational text to the fingertips of your students.  Kids can read about a variety of high interest topics.  They'll interact with a wide range of content while building their skills as nonfiction readers.  This app could be used to enhance a science lesson, provide background knowledge, or just give students a space to read about animals, ecosystems, or any topic that grabs their attention."

"For those many kids who choose not to read books, for those kids who are news junkies, for those kids who choose to focus on nonfiction, for those kids who read everything anyway, and for those kids who are motivated by regular, tangible rewards, Newsela's Free Summer Reading Challenge may be just the thing to engage students with the world, while attacking potential summer reading slump."

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"Students of all ages are required to read text for a variety of purposes. With a large emphasis placed on teaching skills that help children tackle nonfiction, it's important to think about the different ways that students are gathering facts and details as they take in information. Teachers need to think beyond traditional text and make sure that their students have the necessary skills for processing, evaluating, and comprehending multimedia."

"This week Epic! offered classroom teachers and school librarians in the U.S. and Canada free, forever, single subscription access to its iPad app, an "ever-growing library of high-quality children's books from some of the world's best publishers." Epic! calls itself the first "All-You-Can-Read" eBook service for kids. It currently offers thousands of digital titles from 40 publishing partners, including HarperCollins, Simon & Schuster, National Geographic, Kids Can Press, Blue Apple Books. The growing digital collection of titles for ages 2 through 12 includes many recent and award-winning books and represents a mix of fiction and nonfiction. New titles are added each week."

"If you're looking for an awesome online report option for biographies or nonfiction texts, you'll love Hstry.co. Hstry is a site where students can create cool looking, interactive timelines with text, images, videos, and embedded quizzes.  These are really good looking timelines! If you don't believe me, check out this sample on World War I, or this one about the History of Immigration in theUnited States. And your students can create timelines that look just as good."