Thursday Throw Down: Nonfiction Scavenger Hunt

I'm linking up for the first time with Erin from I'm Lovin' Lit for her Thursday Throw Down! I love the idea of trying to make lessons more interactive and engaging. I've been trying to incorporate interactive notebooks this year and get the kids up and moving whenever possible!

Today, we started our nonfiction Readers Workshop unit. To get things started students took a survey over all the "I Can" statements we will cover in nonfiction. They had to rank the statements on a scale of 1 - 4. "1" being I've never heard of this before and "4" being I could teach this to someone else. The handout below was created by an awesome co-worker! Click the image to grab your own copy.

 After previewing our reading unit, we went on a scavenger hunt! Kids were grouped in partners and had to use the text features around my room to create an example and how it helps readers decide what's important. I gave them the text feature and then they had to fill in the rest on their notes sheet.

My note sheet is a little different than the one above but I found this sheet online (after mine had already been copied). This handout from Really Good Stuff that allows for a scavenger "hunt" type lesson plus it could be copied front to back for my larger writers. Click the image for a link to this handout plus text feature posters!

 After we went over the directions and were partnered up, teams set off around the room to find examples and then explain how text features help readers determine what's important. Here are some of my posters -- most were from the teacher's edition of National Geographic Pathfinder magazine. A few others are from Scholastic News. Best of all -- they were free and I already had lots of them from all the years of magazine subscriptions!

 

How do you get your students interacting with texts?