Several years ago, I boarded a planefrom Denver to Salt Lake City. Tomy great fortune, I was seated nextto an eight-year-old boy namedCraig, an unaccompanied minor inairline-speak, who was heading toSalt Lake to spend the summer withhis dad. I asked him if I could helphim in any way, but as a seasonedflyer, he graciously declined. I ex-plained that I would likely be sleep-ing by the time the wheels were up,but not to hesitate to wake me if heneeded anything. Some time later, ahand shaking my shoulder jolted meout of a deep sleep. “Look outside,look outside,” a voice implored.“Isn’t it beautiful!” As I craned myneck to peer out his window, themajesty of the snow-capped peaksstunned me. Craig immediatelypelted me with questions: How tallwere they? When would the snowmelt? What was our altitude? Whichones were fourteeners (mountainsover 14,000 feet tall)? Although I’dmade this flight many times, I hadnever taken time to contemplate theRocky Mountains from 35,000 feetin the air. We spent the remainderof the trip checking out individualpeaks, estimating their height andmarveling at their beauty. Howlucky I was to have ended up nextto Craig, a boy whose curiositywouldn’t let him sit quietly and

Nonfiction is the genre most likely

to spur children’s passion and

wonder for learning.

Language Arts, Vol. 80 No. 1, September 2002

12

Nonfiction Inquiry

Stephanie Harvey

Nonfiction Inquiry: Using Real Readingand Writing to Explore the World

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soak up this beauty without sharingit with a stranger.

The real world is rich, fascinating,and compelling. If I didn’t believethis, I’d cover my head with mypillow when the alarm invaded mysleep each morning and give thesnooze button a workout every fiveminutes! Not a day goes by that Idon’t encounter something differ-ent, wonder about something thatbaffles, meet someone interesting,learn something new, or see some-thing beautiful. For me, the realworld is the realm that most in-trigues. And nonfiction is the genrethat best lets me explore and un-derstand the real world.

I once attended a workshop in whichHoward Gardner scribbled a line ofsmall dark letters on the overheadprojector that emerged as the ques-tion, “What is the purpose of educa-tion?” He asked us to take a momentand comment in our notebooks.

I was confounded. How could heask such a thing—to take a few min-utes to address the complexities ofmy twenty years in education?Could he be serious? I twitched ner-vously, shifting from side to side inmy chair, the auditorium silentexcept for pens skittering acrosspaper. What were they writing? Icouldn’t imagine. The task over-whelmed me. Ten minutes laterwhen Gardner solicited comments,my notebook lay bare on the tablein front of me.

Volunteers from around the roomshared admirable, altruistic ac-counts of the purpose of education:to develop good citizens, to instillcompassion, to give unlucky indi-viduals the chance at a better life.After a dozen or so responses,Gardner acknowledged the merit inthis spectrum of responses andthen mentioned that for him thepurpose of education was to en-hance understanding.

Gardner recounted the story of hisdaughter, an A student in physicswith exemplary grades and veryhigh percentile test scores, whowent to Brown University for herfreshman year in college. Severalweeks into the term she called

home, as so many freshmen dowhen shaken to their foundation byone thing or another. Her voicestammered as she told her dad thatshe didn’t understand physics.“What do you mean you don’t un-derstand physics? You have alwaysbeen a superior physics student,”Gardner responded incredulously.She explained that although she hadlittle trouble with the math andcould complete the assignmentserror free, she did not understandphysics. She’d discovered her lackof understanding when her profes-sor had flipped a coin and asked theclass to explain in writing thephysics involved in coin tossing.She couldn’t do it. Years of highmarks and stratospheric SAT scoresdid not guarantee understanding.

I have never forgotten Gardner’ssimple response to what appeared tobe such a complex question. Not oneaudience member mentioned theword understanding when address-ing the purpose of education. Thiswas a watershed moment for me. Weall have them as educators; this wasone of my biggest. Gardner (1991)discusses teaching for understandingin The Unschooled Mind: How Chil-dren Think and How Schools ShouldTeach. I devoured it within days ofthe workshop and began to teachwith the goal of enhancing my stu-

dents’ understandings. As a result,my instruction is forever changed.From that point on, I revised mylesson plans and followed a two-column chart headed on the leftwith the words My Instruction andon the right with the words How

This Helps My Students Understand.If I couldn’t match the two, Irethought my instruction.

Vito Perrone (1994) says, “Our stu-dents need to be able to use knowl-edge, not just know about things.Understanding is about makingconnections among and betweenthings, about deep and not surfaceknowledge, and about greater com-plexity, not simplicity” (p. 13). Non-fiction enhances our understanding.It allows us to investigate the realworld and inspires us to dig deeperto inquire and better understand. Asteachers we can practice guidingprinciples that lead our students todeeper understanding and learning.We can:

• Share our own passion and wonderabout the real world. Passion andwonder are contagious.

• Surround kids with compelling non-fiction of every type and form.

• Match the reading to the writing.

• Emphasize short text for nonfictionreading and writing instruction andpractice.

• Engage in the inquiry process ourselves—modeling instruction,showing our thinking, demonstratinghow we do things, and giving ourstudents time to practice.

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Nonfiction Inquiry

The real world is rich, fascinating, and compelling. If I didn’t believe this, I’d cover my head with my pillow when the alarm invaded

my sleep each morning and give the snooze button a workout every five minutes!

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• Build in long blocks of time for stu-dents to explore their thoughts andquestions, to read text of theirchoice, to research topics of interest,and to practice reading and writingstrategies.

SHARE OUR OWN PASSIONAND WONDER

Einstein once said, “I have no spe-cial talents. I am only passionatelycurious”—a powerful statement con-sidering the source (cited inCalaprice, 1996, p. 12). It is saidthat as a young boy Einstein hadtrouble getting to sleep at night. Hismother would kiss his forehead,murmur “sleep tight,” and switch offthe light. Later, just before she wasabout to turn in for the night, shewould crack the door to check onhim, only to find him lying on hisback, eyes wide and staring at theceiling. One night she tiptoed in andsat at the edge of his bed. “Whycan’t you sleep?” she asked him.

“I’m thinking,” he answered.

“About what?” she queried.

“I’m wondering where the light goes.”

“What light?” his mother asked.

“When you switch off the lamp eachnight, where does the light go?”

If his mother were anything like me,she probably said, “Jeez, where doyou think it goes? It goes out, Albert.The light goes out. Now get to sleep.”

The story intrigues me, especially be-cause Einstein’s curiosity promptedhim to solve one of the greatest mysteries of our physical universe.Curiosity comes in all forms. Kidshave a natural sense of wonder. Theywonder about all sorts of things;nothing is too trivial. Fifth-graderCassie knows this and keeps a list ofquestions she contemplates in a non-fiction notebook her class calls aWonder Book (see Figure 1). Knowl-edge expands because of wonder.Now, when a student asks me a

question that I can’t answer or that Imight deem superfluous, I think ofAlbert’s insomnia and respond, “Let’ssee if we can find out.”

Questions are at the heart of teach-ing and learning. Outside of school,no one reads about or studies a topic or concept they don’t alreadywonder about. Questioning is thestrategy that propels learners for-ward. Primary teachers know this.They live in classrooms brimmingwith questions. Kindergartners, forinstance, blurt questions out fast andfuriously, often without raising ahand. Frankly, if we didn’t delight soin their youthful enthusiasm, they

might drive us crazy with the sheernumber of questions that burstforth—How do birds fly? Do animalstalk to each other? Where did thecowboys go? Sadly, by fifth grade,kids’ questions practically disappear.By middle school, kids often expectteachers to have the questions whilestudents supply the answers.

Traditionally, schools have focusedon answers, not questions. Realquestions still occur infrequently inmost classrooms (Busching &Slesinger, 1995). Allington (1994)notes, “School questions are differ-ent from the questions we pose out-side of school. In school, we ask

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Language Arts, Vol. 80 No. 1, September 2002

Figure 1. List of Questions in Cassie’s Wonder Book

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known-answer questions—we inter-rogate. Outside of school we ask au-thentic questions—questions we donot know the answer to but are in-terested in having answered” (p. 23).The majority of questions in schoolsare assessment questions, questionsteachers and publishers ask to seewhat kids know. Assessment ques-tions have a legitimate place inschools. But do we have to ask somany? The far more importantquestions are the sincere questions,questions that we don’t know theanswers to, authentic questions thatpeople really wonder about. Sincerequestions engage learners, curedreaded diseases, unlock the mys-teries of the universe, and maybewill secure world peace.

In The Pleasure of Finding ThingsOut, a collection of anecdotes,Nobel Prize–winning physicistRichard Feynman (1999) recollectsthat getting the Nobel was a pain inthe rear. He said, “I do physics notfor the glory of the awards andprizes, but for the fun of it, for thesheer pleasure of finding out howthe world works, what makes it tick”(p. xiv). We want our kids to learnfor the fun of it, for the pleasure offinding stuff out. We need to helpthem find their passions, nurturetheir wonder, and give them oppor-tunities to explore their own sincerequestions so that they will engagein inquiry and dig deeper.

Passion and wonder are contagious(Harvey, 1998). When I walk into anonfiction room, I know it. It’srarely quiet, because readers can’tsit still when they read about thegleaming, razor-sharp teeth of thegreat white shark or the day-to-dayrisks of the Underground Railroadconductor. They feel compelled tolean over, grab their friends, andshare the compelling photograph ofthe Komodo dragon. Nonfictionoffers the widest range of topics,

subjects, people, issues, events, andthoughts to explore.

We know that learners learn bestthose things they know, care, andwonder about. We can model ourown passion for real-world topicsand share our thoughts and ques-tions, as well as the thoughts andquestions of others such as Einsteinand Feynman. Nonfiction breedspassionate curiosity; passion leadsto engagement. If, at the year’s end,we can look at our class and saywith conviction that our kids arepassionately curious learners, we areon the right track.

SURROUND STUDENTS WITHCOMPELLING NONFICTION

A number of years ago, a group ofteachers and I recognized that wevirtually ignored authentic nonfic-tion reading, writing, and research

in our classrooms. We knew weneeded to focus more on real-worldreading and writing, so we began anonfiction study group on how tobetter teach the genre. A half-dozenteachers met weekly and read arange of articles and books, learn-ing from the writers. ChristineDuthie (1996) taught us how sheused nonfiction to nurture the nat-ural sense of wonder in first gradersand how the genre transformedtheir experience into “an exhilarat-ing journey of discovery” (p. 29).We learned from Eileen Burke andSusan Mandel Glazer (1994) thatnonfiction materials and publica-tions were the ones most likely tofoster wonder and “keep curiosity

alive and well” (p. 7). WilliamZinsser’s (1998) On Writing Wellgave us much to think about, in-cluding the notion that we need tosurround kids in authentic nonfic-tion if we want them to read andwrite it well.

As we scanned our classroom li-braries, we unearthed loads of fic-tion and mounds of picture books,but little nonfiction. In an effort toget a handle on the exact contentsof our classroom libraries, we con-ducted a classroom book audit. Toassure that we had the widest rangeof reading material available for themany different kids in our class-rooms, we audited our classroom li-braries for a spectrum of categoriessuch as genre, multicultural themes,short text forms, and so on. Thenwe focused on ways to fill obviousvoids. In this case, we discoveredthat over 80 percent of the books inour rooms were fiction, and thenonfiction books were primarily forreference: textbooks, encyclopedias,dictionaries, and the like.

Outside of school about 80–90 per-cent of the reading adults do isnonfiction—newspapers, magazines,memos, manuals, and directions, aswell as informational trade books(Zinsser, 1998). It didn’t take rocketscience to recognize a lack of con-nection between the classroom andreal life. We needed to get moretrade nonfiction into our class-rooms so the kids could read it, appreciate it, learn from it, andwrite it more authentically. Weheaded to our school and public li-braries and packed our rooms withnonfiction of every size and shape.And kids started reading the genrelike never before.

Shortly after this infusion of non-fiction text into his classroom, fifth-grader Ben wrote about his enjoyment of reading nonfiction inhis Wonder Book (see Figure 2).

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Nonfiction Inquiry

Nonfiction breedspassionate curiosity;

passion leads toengagement.

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Reading is about appetite and diet.Ben needed opportunities to readnonfiction. We never told Ben hecouldn’t read nonfiction, but wehadn’t shared it in the same way weshared fiction in the classroom. Wecould picture him on the play-ground in one of those round,cement tunnels clandestinely read-ing a piece of nonfiction. We inad-vertently turned Ben into a closetnonfiction reader! We hadn’t sur-rounded him in the genre or used iteffectively in our classroom. It’s notenough to simply provide access tobooks and materials. We need to:

• read nonfiction aloud.

• explore nonfiction to satisfy curiosity.

• use nonfiction for instruction.

• read nonfiction to find out information.

• read nonfiction to do research.

• skim nonfiction to answer questions.

• show particular features of nonfiction—the titles, headings, boldprint, graphs, charts—and point outthe purpose of these text elements.

• read nonfiction to write it well(Maxim, 1998).

When I was in elementary school,my favorite part of the day camewhen my teacher sat down in herrocking chair and read aloud to us.Curled up in the reading corner Iencountered Bartholomew Cubbins,the Sailor Dog, and Black Beauty.Teachers know the value of readingaloud, and the teachers of my youthread me all sorts of books and sto-ries. But I can’t for the life of me re-member a teacher reading a piece ofinformational text out loud. Doiron(1994) notes that we need to bal-ance our read-aloud programs withfiction and nonfiction. “Balancingbooks does not preclude the power-ful role that fiction plays in reading

aloud but will give nonfiction anequal opportunity to act as a modelfor students, help them developschema for the genre, and motivatethem to read” (p. 619).

We read aloud young adult maga-zines such as National Geographicfor Kids, Kids Discover, Time forKids, and Jr. Scholastic. We readaloud compelling nonfiction tradebooks on every imaginable topic andin a variety of forms. We read bookslike Jim Murphy’s (1995) The GreatFire, the amazing story of the Chi-cago fire, Peter Lourie’s (1999) LostTreasure of the Inca, an adventurestory about the author’s search forIncan gold, William Miller’s (1994)Zora Hurston and the ChinaberryTree, which offers a glimpse into the writer’s early years, KathrynLasky’s (1994) The Librarian WhoMeasured the Earth, based on the

life of Eratosthenes, the world’s firstlibrarian, and K. M. Kostyal’s (1999)Trial by Ice, the story of ErnestShackleton, who fought valiantly tosave the lives of the men on hisAntarctic expedition.

We turn to a variety of sources fornonfiction recommendations includ-ing books, journals, and Web sites.Kobrin’s Eyeopeners (1988) and Eye-openers II (1995) and Harvey andGoudvis’s (2000) Strategies ThatWork contain annotated lists of non-fiction books covering a wide rangeof topics and content areas. BookLinks: Connecting Books, Librariesand Classrooms, a journal of theAmerican Library Association, isfilled with annotated nonfiction bib-liographies organized by grade level.The annual NCTE Orbis PictusAwards for the best nonfiction chil-dren’s book of the year can be found

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Language Arts, Vol. 80 No. 1, September 2002

Figure 2. Ben’s Entry in His Wonder Book

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at <www.ncte.org> (keyword OrbisPictus). Web sites such as <www.nationalgeographic.com/kids> and<www.americaslibrary.gov> teemwith interesting nonfiction resources.

Kobrin (1988) believes that no genreis as versatile as nonfiction to matchchildren’s interests and needs.Whether they are interested in math,science, or history, whether they arestruggling or proficient readers,whether they are young children oryoung adults, nonfiction offers thebest shot at capturing their interestand getting them to read.

Information comes in many forms.Most nonfiction doesn’t need to beread cover to cover. We can checkout the table of contents andchoose what interests us. We don’thave to read nonfiction sequen-tially. We can start in the middle to

find the information we desire. Wedon’t even have to read much text.We can get plenty of informationfrom the photographs, captions,charts, and maps. We teach the fea-tures and text elements of nonfic-tion. We scan nonfiction text withour students and search for the sup-portive features common to thegenre: headings, subheadings, boldprint, graphs, diagrams, and soforth. Students search for these fea-tures in their independent readingtexts as well.

After finding authentic examples ofnonfiction features and discussingtheir purpose, we co-construct a

two-column classroom chart headedFeature on the left-hand side andPurpose on the right. Together withthe kids, we write our working defi-nition of the feature in the Featurecolumn and then describe its pur-pose under the Purpose column. Thechart is a work in progress that weadd to over the course of the year todevelop an awareness of nonfictionelements and enhance our under-standing of the genre.

Feature Purpose

Bold print Make you stop andpay attention

Caption Describe the photo-graph

Table of contents Divide the bookinto sections orchapters

Heading Tell you what thefollowing text isabout

Subheading Break the text upinto smaller parts

Distribution map Show where some-thing occurs

For years, we chose nonfiction read-ing material solely based on con-tent. When the time came to studyspace, for example, we stopped atthe library and asked the librarianto gather all the space books andsend them our way. Now when wechoose nonfiction books to sharewith our kids, we make our choicesbased on three criteria:

• Content—We choose books thatrelate to our curriculum or topic ofstudy, that we are passionate about,or that we suspect will capture ourkids’ imaginations.

• Text features—We choose books thatpresent text features such as maps,graphs, charts, headings, and sub-headings, which support readers asthey read for information.

• Writing quality—We choose booksthat are written in a compelling,

visual way that engages readers andoffers strong models for writing.

We don’t just stop by and ask the li-brarian to gather the books. We joinher to search for the most powerfulnonfiction trade books. Doiron(1994) notes that educators are dis-covering what children have knownfor a long time—reading for infor-mation can be fun. “Children arenaturally curious, with a great thirstto know about the world aroundthem. They are not bored by facts,data or information; they are onlybored by how such information ispresented or what they are expectedto do with it” (p. 618). We need tosurround our students with nonfic-tion text, fill them in on the ele-ments of the genre, point out theways to acquire information, andencourage them to explore the realworld through this lively genre.

MATCH THE READINGTO THE WRITING

Zinsser (1976) reminds us that wecan best support nonfiction writersby matching the reading to thewriting. Read strong nonfiction towrite it well. Our nonfiction studygroup began to think about nonfic-tion writing and quickly recognizedthat we were not modeling nonfic-tion writing with authentic, well-written examples. We had assignedmany content-area school reports—the usual suspects of state reports,country reports, and animal reports,but they seemed more suited tocuring insomnia than engagingreaders. We must surround kids withwell-written interesting nonfiction,so that they learn to write it well.

Remember state reports? Each student drew a state out of a hat.Audible groans reverberated fromunfortunate souls who drew statesthat offered no connection or allure.Cheers burst from the lucky kidswho drew hot spots like California,

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Nonfiction Inquiry

Information comes in many forms. Most nonfiction

doesn’t need to be read

cover to cover.

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Alaska, or Hawaii. The teacher as-signed a list of subtopics that bore astriking resemblance to the structureof a World Book article. Then eachstudent rushed to the library tocheck out a lettered-volume, theover-represented N’s stumbling over

one another to get to the encyclope-dia stacks first. Kids read the ency-clopedia and perhaps a book from aseries on states and then spent hoursrearranging words to avoid plagia-rizing, a terrifying offense thatmight land them a dawn execution.

Traditional school research reportsrelegate students to the status ofmere “word movers” who essentiallyrearrange information and report it(McKenzie, 1995). I learned as earlyas the fourth grade that if I movedthe object to the subject and the sub-

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Nonfiction Inquiry

Language Arts, Vol. 80 No. 1, September 2002

Many writers and researchers keep notebooks torecord their day-to-day thinking. We ask kids to keepnonfiction notebooks (typically spiral notebooks withlined paper) to hold their thinking related to their nonfic-tion reading, writing, and inquiry. A group of fifthgraders named these notebooks Wonder Books to re-flect their inquisitiveness about the real world and theirunderstanding of the genre of nonfiction. The WonderBook provides a record of student thinking and learningas they engage in nonfiction inquiry through writing, re-sponding, and notetaking.

Teachers keep their own Wonder Books. They modelentries and share true-to-life narratives where theauthor or main character records and reflects on an in-terest, topic, or concept, merging their own thinkingwith the text. Several possibilities for launching WonderBooks include:

• Sanctuary by Mary Ann Fraser

• I’m In Charge of Celebrations by Byrd Baylor

• For Home and Country: A Civil War Scrapbook byNorman Bolotin and Angela Herb

• A Desert Scrapbook by Virginia Wright-Frierson

At the beginning of the year, we encourage students tostudy anything that interests them and to record theirthinking in their Wonder Books. Kids also record theirresponses to curricular topics and content-area readingin Wonder Books.

Ultimately, Wonder Books include:

• Passions and interests

• Questions and wonderings

• Current thoughts

• Topic lists

• Project ideas

• Observations

• Responses to nonfiction reading

• Notes on reading content

• Notes on topics of interest

• Notes on field research

• Notes on inquiry projects

• Bibliographic information on books that were read

• Lists of helpful resources: Web sites, readings, con-versations, etc.

• Outlines, webs, and other graphic organizers

• Interviews

• Letters

• Poems and rhymes

• Drawings, sketches, cartoons, and doodles

• Maps, charts, graphs, and diagrams

• Photographs, pictures, and postcards

• Assorted artifacts

• Quotes from books, writers, teachers, other kids

• Models of beautiful language and well-written nonfiction

• Drafts of nonfiction writing

Wonder Books are perhaps the most important tool forreal-world nonfiction investigation as kids read, write,and engage in inquiry. They give kids an opportunity toreflect on their learning about the real world and mergetheir thinking with the ideas and information they haveread and studied. Wonder Books help to make thelearning their own.

—Stephanie Harvey

Nonfiction Notebooks: AKA Wonder Books

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ject to the end of the sentence, I beatthe plagiarizing charge. Unfortu-nately, the bulk of my thinking wasfocused on how to avoid plagiarizing

rather than on content and craft. Aweek or two later, my state reportwas turned in to await FDA approvalas a surefire cure for insomnia.

We’ve all read those deadly schoolreports that sound the same yearafter year, only differentiated by thestudent’s name in the upper corner.The truth is, I not only wrote thesereports in school, but I also assignedthem as a teacher. Unless we aretraining our young writers for acareer in encyclopedia writing, weneed to search for better models ofauthentic nonfiction.

Authentic nonfiction writing is richand full of voice. We teach our stu-dents that their best writing teachersare the authors they love, not theencyclopedias they need for begin-ning research. Freeman (1991) pointsout that we need to share a range ofnonfiction trade books when weteach nonfiction writing. Childrencan become familiar with a varietyof nonfiction authors and their indi-vidual writing styles and then usethese books as models for their ownwriting. We share the works of suchwriters as Jean Fritz, who makes his-tory come alive, Stephen Kramer,whose investigations into tornadosand avalanches rattle our senses,and Russell Freedman, who takes usinside the heads of remarkablepeople such as Abe Lincoln andCrazy Horse. When we use well-crafted nonfiction text as the model,nonfiction writing comes to life.

One sure-fire way to help kids noticehigh-quality writing is to make atransparency of a well-crafted non-fiction piece and place it on the

overhead projector next to a copy ofa textbook or encyclopedia article ofsimilar content. We might comparean article from National GeographicMagazine with a textbook article onthe same topic. We might compare apage out of a nonfiction trade bookwith the encyclopedia. We might use the striking lead in RussellFreedman’s (1997) Newbery award-winning Lincoln: A Photobiography,which begins as follows: “Abe Lin-coln wasn’t the sort of man whocould lose himself in a crowd. Afterall, he stood six feet four inchestall, and to top it off, he wore a tallsilk hat. His height was mostly inhis long bony legs. When he sat ina chair, he seemed no taller thananyone else. It was only when hestood up that he towered aboveother men” (p. 1). After reading anddiscussing the rich writing with ourkids, we can show a copy of an encyclopedia page on the samecontent: “Abraham Lincoln, the sixteenth president of the UnitedStates, was born on February 12,1809 near the present town of Hodgenville, Ky” (Angle, 1963,p. 652). The difference is immedi-ately obvious, and kids pick up onit even though they may never have noticed it before. We followby inviting them to comb throughpieces of authentic nonfiction text—trade books, newspapers, andmagazines—searching for examplesof rich nonfiction writing to sharewith the class. Authentic nonfiction

is visual and compelling; no onewould publish it if it were dry, dull,and formulaic. Our kids need toknow this.

EMPHASIZE SHORT TEXT

I advocate more extensive use ofshort text to teach reading andwriting. Schools are overfocused onchapter books. I generally have agood novel or good nonfictiontrade book on my bedstand, but forevery long book I complete, I readmounds of short text—feature articles, essays, poems, editorials,manuals, book reviews, recipes,professional journals, letters, e-mail, etc. The bulk of the readingmaterial housed in our classroomlibraries is long fiction, whereasmuch of the reading we do outsideof the classroom is short nonfiction.Short text is:

• well crafted with vivid language and striking illustrations and photographs.

• self-contained and provides a com-plete set of thoughts, ideas, and in-formation.

• focused on issues of critical impor-tance to readers of varying ages.

• easily read aloud, giving a commonexperience to everyone in the room.

• easily reread for deeper meaning.

• accessible to all kinds of readers; thelength is less likely to intimidate.

• a realistic model for writing.

• authentic and prepares kids for real-world reading (Harvey & Goudvis,2000)

The world is rife with rich nonfic-tion. We need to live in a way thatlets us find it. We keep our anten-nae up in this pursuit by scanningnewspapers, magazines, and tradebooks for short pieces to use for in-struction. National Geographic is a

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Nonfiction Inquiry

Authentic nonfiction writing is rich and full of voice.We teach our students that their best writing

teachers are the authors they love, not theencyclopedias they need for beginning research.

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favorite of mine, but I never actu-ally read one growing up. Althoughtheir yellow spines filled our book-shelves, and I spent hours pouringover the luscious photographs offar-off shores and deep dark jun-gles, I was fully grown before I readmy first National Geographic. WhenI did, I found the words to be asstriking as the pictures.

As a lifelong reader of newspapersand magazines, I read with scissorsin hand, madly snipping articles touse for literacy instruction and

practice. We clip and laminate richpieces of nonfiction writing toshare with young writers to helpthem notice the craft as well as thecontent. We use short text to sup-port our students as they practicereading strategically. We maketransparencies of short text piecesand read them closely, reasoningthrough the text together with kids, showing how we activatebackground knowledge, ask ques-tions, determine importance, andsynthesize information as we read.We choose short text for the fol-lowing reasons:

• Content—We search for pieces thatsupport and build backgroundknowledge of the content we areteaching. We also look for text thatfocuses on themes and concepts wehave explored or want to explore,and we jump on text with contentwe suspect will engage our kids.

• Strategy Practice—We search forshort pieces that push our thinking,demand that we question, visualize,infer, or synthesize to acquire infor-mation and understand.

• Features—We look for pieces thatcontain nonfiction features thatsignify importance, such as head-ings, bold print, italics, captions, sothat we can show authentic exam-ples of these elements, discovertheir purpose, and better under-stand the genre.

• Format—We choose different typesof nonfiction short text such asnewspapers, magazines, and picturebooks and notice how they compare.

• Form—We select a variety of writingforms including essays, letters, fea-ture articles, columns, to expose ourstudents to the different character-istics of each form.

• Text Structure—We clip differentshort text forms to examine differ-ent cue words and text structures.For instance, when a sentencebegins with the word but, we teachour students to expect a change. Wefind articles framed around a spe-cific text structure, such as compar-ing and contrasting ideas andinformation, and we look at them tobetter recognize and understand thestructure next time.

• Writing Quality—We search for deli-cious writing. Our best writingteachers author the nonfiction textswe read.

• Perspective—We choose articles thatmight spark differences in opinion toenhance classroom discussions.

• Surprising Information—We noticeunexpected information. I recentlyread a headline that said “Misun-derstood Sharks, Not Feeding Ma-chines.” I couldn’t resist readingand clipping it, because I alwaysread that sharks were instinctivefeeding machines, and now thissurprising, new twist! Kids love sur-prising information (Harvey &Goudvis, 2000).

This collecting of short text is con-tagious. Portalupi and Fletcher(2001) remind us: “Nonfictionshows up everywhere and in lots of

different forms. If students arealive to the possibilities, their op-tions will broaden once it comestime to write” (p. 14). Teachersshare short text examples withtheir class and with each other tobuild bigger, better collections.Kids clip striking articles, too, andpass them around the class. I usedto find short pieces and articlesthat captivated me but tossed themaway. Now, I save and file themeven if I am not sure how to usethem. Somehow, sometime, I find apurpose for them.

ENGAGE IN THE INQUIRYPROCESS OURSELVES

Throughout their childhood, I madea practice of telling my kids that itwas okay to make a mistake, as longas they didn’t make the same mis-take over and over again. And I be-lieved this, until it dawned on methat when it came to delivering in-struction, I continued to make thesame mistake over and over again.Each time I thought about why alesson was ineffective, I could onlyconclude that it was due to one oftwo reasons: either I hadn’t modeledexplicitly enough what I was doing,or I hadn’t given my studentsenough time to practice. When wecut the corner on modeling andguided practice, instruction suffers.So much for making the same mis-take over and over.

Much of our responsibility whenteaching is to make explicit what isimplicit. Explicit instruction meansthat we explain the strategy to betaught and show learners how weuse it, and how we think when weread and write. For too long in edu-cation, we told students what to dowithout showing them how. Our in-struction always involves modelingand practice in one form or another.We may use charts, we might puttext on the overhead and reasonthrough it together, or we might

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Much of ourresponsibility whenteaching is to make

explicit what is implicit.

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show our thinking through readingand thinking out loud.

We do most everything we assign. Ifwe assign an essay, we write one.We research and write inquiry re-ports from start to finish with kids.We show how we choose topics. Weshow how we ask questions and howwe read for information. We use theoverhead projector to show studentshow we organize our thinking forwriting and how we draft and reviseso students can see our process asthinkers, readers, and writers.

We demonstrate every step in thelearning process for several reasons.

First, if it is important enough forthem to do, it is important enoughfor us to do. Second, we provide theinstruction through modeling. Westay slightly ahead of the kids sothey will see the next step whenthey are ready to move on. We can’timagine how to teach the process ifwe didn’t show how. Third, we learnso much when we undertake theseinquiry projects. I’ve written aboutthe country of Tibet and the plightof Tibetans, the role of women inWorld War II, the Australian boxjelly fish (the most toxic creature onearth), and the physicists whoworked on the Manhattan Project. I

know much more than I would haveif I only assigned these projectsrather than studied, researched, andwritten about them myself. Whenwe take the time to show kids how,we all enhance our understanding,acquire information, and reap bigrewards in the process.

BUILD IN LONG BLOCKS OFTIME FOR STUDENTS TO THINK,QUESTION, READ, AND WRITE

If we want our kids to engage indeep, meaningful inquiry and to un-derstand what they learn, we needto build in long blocks of time for

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Click <www.cricketmag.com> is a theme-based maga-zine for ages 3–7 on history, math, the arts, science, andtechnology. It contains dynamic photographs and illus-trations, an activity insert, and a Web-based Parent’sCompanion.

Muse <www.cricketmag.com> is a visually striking non-fiction magazine for ages 8–14 with short informative ar-ticles, interviews, and photo essays on high-interesttopics from current events, science, history, animals,the environment, technology, nature, and the arts.

KIDS Discover <www.discover.com> offers a wealth ofinformation for ages 6–12 for themed issues on high-interest topics such as robots, blood, icebergs, andMartin Luther King Jr. Striking photographs accompanythe articles along with puzzles and projects.

Cobblestone <www.cobblestonepub.com> focuses onAmerican history for ages 9–14 through lively, histori-cally accurate articles, visual images, primary docu-ments, maps, timelines, and activities. Cobblestone alsopublishes a range of other magazines for children in-cluding Footsteps (African American history), Apple-Seeds (social studies for young children), Calliope(world history), Faces (world cultures and geography),and Odyssey (scientific issues and discoveries).

ASK (Arts and Sciences for Kids) <www.cricketmag.com> is a new themed journal for ages 8–11 that ex-

plores the ways in which artists, inventors, and scien-tists discover ideas. Each issue integrates the arts andsciences on a particular topic through articles, a serialstory about a group of young explorers, puzzles, activi-ties, and lively art and photos.

Dig <www.digonsite.com>, a publication of the Archae-ological Institute of America, encourages kids ages8–13 to discover what’s new about everything old ontopics such as the pyramids, deep-sea artifacts, and di-nosaurs. Each themed issue contains articles, projects,comics, puzzles, photographs, and news features on thework of archaeologists.

Ranger Rick <www.nwf.org/rangerrick>, produced bythe National Wildlife Federation, aims to inspire agreater understanding of the natural world for ages7–12 through colorful photographs and illustrations, fiction and nonfiction stories, and news on nature andwildlife from around the world.

National Geographic World <www.nationalgeographic.com/world> covers outdoor adventures, sports, foreigngeography, science/technology, and natural history forages 9–14. Special features include posters, games, ac-tivities, and puzzles.

—Kathy G. Short

Informational Magazines for Children

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students to explore topics of interest,read, write, and ponder about theworld. Allington and Johnston(1994) found that thinking takestime. The most effective teachersunderstood that important thingsand big ideas are hard to teach in20-minute chunks. Effective teach-ers integrated instruction and de-voted large blocks of time tostudying topics and concepts. Stu-dents were given time to “experi-ment with, think through, discuss,and refine their understandings”(Preller, 2000, p. 7).

We strive to create a culture ofthinking in our classrooms (Perkins,1993). Thinking, understanding, andengagement flourish in classroomsthat foster real-world inquiry. Timeand choice support students to en-hance their understanding and ac-quire knowledge. When we build intime to share our passion and en-courage sincere questions, surroundour kids with compelling nonfiction,match the reading to the writing,model how we learn, and give stu-dents long blocks of time to delveinto and practice with text of theirchoice, kids come alive and learningexplodes. Nonfiction is the genremost likely to spur enthusiasm. Thereal world has something for every-one. As Beverly Kobrin (1990) said,“Life is nonfiction.”

Children’s Books Cited

Freedman, R. (1997). Lincoln: A photobiogra-phy. New York: Clarion.

Kostyal, K. M. (1999). Trial by ice. Washing-ton, DC: National Geographic Society.

Lasky, K. (1994). The librarian who measuredthe earth. Boston: Little, Brown.

Lourie, P. (1999). Lost treasure of the Inca.Honesdale, PA: Boyds Mills Press.

Miller, W. (1994). Zora Hurston and the chin-aberry tree. New York: Lee & Low.

Murphy, J. (1995). The great fire. New York:Scholastic.

References

Allington, R. L. (1994). The schools we have.The schools we need. The ReadingTeacher, 48, 14–28.

Angle, P. (1963). Abraham Lincoln. In Col-lier’s Encyclopedia (Vol. 14, pp. 652–659).New York: Crowell-Collier.

Burke, E. M., & Mandel Glazer, S. (1994).Using nonfiction in the classroom. NewYork: Scholastic.

Busching, B. A., & Slesinger, B. (1995). Au-thentic questions: What do they looklike? Where do they lead? Language Arts,72, 341–351.

Calaprice, A. (1996). The quotable Einstein.Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

Doiron, R. (1994). Using nonfiction in aread-aloud program: Letting the factsspeak for themselves. The ReadingTeacher, 47, 616–624.

Duthie, C. (1996). True stories: Nonfiction lit-eracy in the primary classroom. York, ME:Stenhouse.

Feynman, R. P. (1999). The pleasure of find-ing things out. Cambridge, MA: PerseusBooks.

Freeman, E. B. (1991). Informational books:Models for student report writing. Lan-guage Arts, 68, 470–473.

Gardner, H. (1991). The unschooled mind:How children think and how schoolsshould teach. New York: Basic.

Harvey, S. (1998). Nonfiction matters: Read-ing, writing and research in grades 3–8.York, ME: Stenhouse.

Harvey, S., & Goudvis, A. (2000). Strategiesthat work: Teaching comprehension to enhance understanding. York, ME:Stenhouse.

Kobrin, B. (1988). Eyeopeners! How tochoose and use children’s books aboutreal people, places and things. New York:Penguin.

Kobrin, B. (1990, May). Using nonfiction inthe classroom. Keynote address at Read,Lead and Succeed, conference conductedby Maine Reading Association.

Kobrin, B. (1995). Eyeopeners II! Children’sbooks to answer children’s questionsabout the world around them. New York:Scholastic.

Maxim, D. (1998). Nonfiction literature asthe “text” of my intermediate classroom:That’s a fact. In R. Bamford and J. Kristo(Eds.) Making facts come alive: Choosingquality nonfiction literature, K–8(pp. 211–226). Norwood, MA: Christopher-Gordon.

McKenzie, J. (1996, November). Making webmeaning. Educational Leadership, 54,30–32.

Perkins, D. (1993, November). Creating a cul-ture of thinking. Educational Leadership,51, 98–99.

Perrone, V. (1994, February). How to engagestudents in learning. Educational Leader-ship, 51, 11–13.

Portalupi, J., & Fletcher, R. (2001). Nonfic-tion craft lessons. York, ME: Stenhouse.

Preller, P. (2000, Spring). Fostering thought-ful literacy in elementary classrooms. En-glish Update: A Newsletter from theCenter on English Learning and Achieve-ment, pp. 1, 7.

Zinsser, W. (1998). On writing well: The clas-sic guide to writing nonfiction (6th ed.).New York: Harper.

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Stephanie Harvey is a staff developer forthe Denver-based Public Education andBusiness Coalition, a consultant, and theauthor of Nonfiction Matters and Strate-gies That Work.

Author Biography

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