Nonfiction Text Features Chart

Yesterday, I shared a Fiction Text Structure Chart and today, I’m sharing a FREE Nonfiction Text Features Chart. BOTH of these charts are a fantastic way to help readers, especially struggling readers with comprehension.

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**The free printable can be found at the END of this post. Just click on the teal download button.

Nonfiction Text Features Chart

What are text features? Text features are extra visuals and print that authors include in books and other texts to help the reader understand the information better. For example, an author might mention a tiny nation that you’ve never heard of before. A map would be a helpful text feature for you to know exactly where this nation is in the world.

 

Teaching Learners about Nonfiction Text Features

1. To use this nonfiction text features chart, I’d recommend introducing only a few at a time. Some of them are very similar {like an index and a glossary}, so it would be a good idea to teach those on a different day.

2. As you teach each one, find and show examples from nonfiction texts and ask learners to try to find them, too. With each example, discuss WHY this text feature is helpful to comprehension.

You can find some of our favorite nonfiction series books {K-5},
which are a great resource for teaching text features.

 

3. As you progress through your study, ask your readers to think critically about text features in nonfiction. When they are reading, can they find any examples where an extra text feature may have been helpful for comprehension? Ask them to explain their thinking.

*Just a Note: Readers of all ages, especially struggling readers, tend to skip over many of the text features within a text. To help readers understand their importance, take some time before reading to look through the photographs/illustrations, charts, graphs, or maps and talk about what you notice. Make some predictions about what they’ll learn or start a list of questions they have based solely from the text features.

 

A book that has been so helpful in understanding text features and text structures has been Emily Kissner’s Summarizing, Paraphrasing, and Retelling. If you’re looking for more information, it may be helpful to you, too!

 

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Understanding Nonfiction Text Features & Structures

 

 

 

Enjoy!
~Becky