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This is the Reading Teachers Lounge where listeners can eavesdrop on professional conversations between elementary reading teachers. We are passionate about literacy and strive to find strategies to reach all learners. Shannon and Mary are neighbors who realized that they were “literacy soul sisters” at a dinner in their Atlanta neighborhood. Once they started chatting about reading they haven’t really stopped. Come join the conversation.

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Reading Teachers Lounge

7.8 Importance of NonFiction

January 23, 2025 • Shannon Betts and Mary Saghafi • Season 7 • Episode 8

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Shannon and Mary talk with Melissa Taylor from ImaginationSoup.net about the importance of nonfiction texts in a student's reading diet. They chat about the flexible comprehension strategies students need to organize the information gathered from nonfiction and text features and structures that are specific to nonfiction texts. Listeners should walk away inspired to put more NF texts in their readers hands.

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7.8 Importance of Nonfiction with Melissa Taylor

Shannon Betts: [00:00:00] Welcome to the Reading Teachers Lounge, where you can learn on the go by eavesdropping on experienced reading teachers chatting about best practices that have helped their students grow. Mary and I, along with expert guests, share what we wish we'd studied in college, what we've discovered works with the students we teach, and what we're continuing to learn from the science of reading.

Mary Saghafi: Learning to read is hard, and sometimes teaching a child how to read feels even more challenging.

Shannon Betts: The Reading Teachers Lounge is here to help you get started and navigate the right choices for your readers. Come join the conversation.

Mary Saghafi: Hello,

and welcome to the Reading Teacher's Lounge. Shannon and I are really excited to introduce a guest today. We have Melissa Taylor. Her blog and website is called Imagination Soup. And she has. [00:01:00] beautiful book lists of all kinds of texts that would be great for teachers to access, parents to access children to access to find all kinds of titles.

And so today we're going to really focus on nonfiction texts, informational texts, and talk about success. So we let's, let's introduce you, Melissa. Melissa, how do you fit into the reading community?

Melissa Taylor: Well, first of all, thanks for having me. I appreciate that. I began my career as an elementary teacher and a K 12 literacy trainer.

I have a master's in global education and I won outstanding teacher in my district four years in a row. When I had my two kids, I transitioned to freelance education writing. So I wrote for places like Parenting Magazine on education advocacy, Alex Toys, I've written for Adobe, I write for Random House, Still and then back in 2009, I found an imagination soup.

It was. more children's activities, learning activities, but as my kids have grown, it's [00:02:00] become primarily a children's book review blog. And it's a place for parents, grandparents, teachers, and librarians to find the best books for kids. I read at least 150 books a month, and then I curate the best ones for the people who read Imagination Soup.

Shannon Betts: That's a, that's a lot of books and we appreciate people who do that work because I don't have time to always find the good titles, you know, so I rely on my local library a lot because there's there's constantly new books being published. And how are you supposed to know about those, right? Unless you're going to the bookstore regularly and so we appreciate all the bloggers and influencers out there that are curating these book lists and finding the best titles and then sort of summarizing them and saying, okay, if you have a student who likes this, try these books so that they're not having the same so that they have a more varied diet,

Melissa Taylor: right?

Exactly. It's my reading fast is my only superpower. I grew up without a [00:03:00] television so I feel like I'm putting my superpower to good use.

Mary Saghafi: Well, we we came across your blog post titled reading nonfiction prepares kids for success and throughout our season we've been talking a lot about. Oh, I mean all kinds of strands, but especially language development and also building background knowledge and making sure that our students are exposed to really good vocabulary and and one of the best ways to do that is really exposing them to informational text.

That really crosses content areas not just relying on fiction to texts when we're teaching students about reading. And so if you could just help us summarize a little bit about why you think that reading nonfiction prepares kids for success, we're totally in agreement, but I think that our, our listeners could really benefit from this.

Melissa Taylor: Yeah, happy to, I love talking about this, and when I was in the classroom, I would always do, this is just an aside, but I would do tests to [00:04:00] see comprehension, and I, especially fifth grade and fourth grade are my, the things I taught the most the comprehension levels and narrative versus expository text, and expository text was generally, across the board, one grade level below, so it's really important that we are helping kids read it.

Nonfiction at least 50 percent of the time, because as they progress through the grades, they will be expected to primarily read for information and expository text. So they need to know and be proficient to be able to do that. And even adult thinking about how much as adults, we read informational texts, kids need to be able to comprehend expository text because one, it helps them learn information.

And two, it builds background knowledge, which is so important to comprehending anything that they read. And of course. Three, it builds vocabulary, and the more vocabulary we have, we know that that correlates to success in life and reading achievement. It's also part of the Common Core Standards, so that's an important part of [00:05:00] elementary, especially to try to get that balance of informational, which is what they call it, or non fiction text and fiction text.

Mary Saghafi: I love there's there's a, a, a little like blib. I'm not sure exactly what the, how I want to describe this, but in your blog, you describe nonfiction as an essential part of a child's reading diet. And I really love that concept. So can you talk a little bit about you know, how important it is to have this type of text for our students and, and kind of what it, what it does for their reading diet.

Melissa Taylor: Well, it's interesting there is a study, Journal of Literacy Research or something, that did a study of first graders, and 80 percent of the first graders chose non fiction books when picking their own book. So I think it non fiction really correlates with kids natural curiosity. They want to learn things.

They love [00:06:00] learning things. So we forget that sometimes when we're providing them books, because. It's underrepresented in libraries and classrooms and homes. Apparently another study I read said that most classroom libraries only had about 20 percent of books that were nonfiction. So it's really important to be aware that kids need both fiction and nonfiction because they like nonfiction and it's not, you know, they don't just like stories.

So that's really I think important to remember, just like we have to eat a balanced diet, we have to read a balanced diet.

Shannon Betts: You mentioned that you, when you were teaching in the classroom, when you were teaching the fourth and fifth graders, that you saw that there wasn't an equal level of ability in terms of understanding and comprehension level for narrative versus expository.

Why was expository more challenging for the students? Like, what was, what was the barrier? For them understanding the nonfiction. Was it just a [00:07:00] higher level of vocabulary, like longer words?

Melissa Taylor: No, I think it's a lack of practice, honestly, more than anything. I mean, certainly, there are going to be some texts that they're not going to comprehend as well if they don't have the background knowledge for the vocabulary for it.

Like you're saying, I had taught bilingual kids In my first year of teaching and they had to do a state assessment, half of them weren't even transitioned to English. And, and so they had to read a passage on spelunking. And of course, There's no chance in this world that they were going to comprehend this because they were still learning English, but also like that's a really specific thing to have a background knowledge of caving.

I don't even know if all very many kids would do well on that test but so I think it's lack of practice and then it just depends on the passage you're choosing for. Are they those readers who can infer vocabulary words and concepts and that. Again, practice in nonfiction text and understanding text structures and [00:08:00] understanding the different kinds of structures within nonfiction text is so important to success at your comprehension, right?

Shannon Betts: Yeah you're sitting there in Colorado and you have snow on the ground. We're in Georgia and it's, we're pretty much in short sleeves right now. And my bilingual students in third grade in Georgia had a passage about downhill skiing on the state test. You can imagine it went about as successfully as the spelunking passage.

And I was just walking around cringing, watching them get every question wrong.

Melissa Taylor: It's just like us as adults. I can't, if you give me something about Finance, I'm really not gonna, or cars. I just, I don't have the background knowledge for that.

Shannon Betts: And then you mentioned, like, the text structures and the text features.

I do know, like, kind of half, maybe about 10 years into my career, I did get some good resources. I mean, I had to purchase outside resources. They weren't really in my curriculum, but I got outside resources to teach the text features. very explicitly and teaching [00:09:00] students exactly how to use the table of contents.

Exactly. You know, I mean, they didn't even understand that, like, when it was the first page number of the chapter that that chapter went till when the next page number was mentioned for the next chapter, you know, like just little things like that, the students, we take for granted. And so I, my students got a lot better at nonfiction when I explicitly took a lot of time to work on the nonfiction text features and how to locate the specific information.

I am not as good at teaching the structure of nonfiction. So can you explain some of that? Like, I know that there's some nonfiction that's more cause and effect. There's some nonfiction that's more compare and contrast. What else? What kind of structures do students need to understand? Because the nonfiction text structure typically is very different than nonfiction.

Story structure of fiction, which has a beginning, middle, and end, and characters, and setting, and things like that.

Mary Saghafi: I think you could even be more specific too, if you want, because in, in the article, and we're linking this article in our in our [00:10:00] comments, you talk a lot about the National Geographic almanac, and and, you know, how students can actually, like, look at an almanac.

So if you. You know, if you need a more specific way of like talking about this informational text, maybe we can talk about that.

Melissa Taylor: Sure. I think, going back to the first question about the, how do you use text structures, it's helping kids, I mean, it's, I don't really think it matters if they can go, oh, this is, Problem solution or cause and effect, but there are different text structures.

What we're helping support kids is this, is they can, they have that cognitive pattern in their background knowledge of sort of understanding what to expect when they're reading something that's a cause and effect or compare and contrast so that they can organize the information and comprehend it. And then like in a book like the almanac, which is, It's really got so, it's so full of text features, which I think can really support comprehension.

So if we're thinking about teaching kids how [00:11:00] to determine what's important, which is really hard for so many kids, especially at first. And then you're like explaining to them how a heading versus a caption can tell you what's important versus what's interesting, you know, and that is a really important thing.

Like major thing for kids. Cause like you said, until we teach it and model it and have them practice it and apply it, they don't know.

Mary Saghafi: Yeah, I think that that's so specific to, because I think as adults, we don't do it intentionally, but we do make assumptions because we are so practiced at looking at a heading and then interpreting like the, those informational details.

And also I think when time becomes A little bit of a pressure cooker, you tend to rush through things that you don't view as you know the most essential or you may make assumptions that the students already know it. But I think spending some quality time and then giving a lot of practice doses of letting students explore this on their [00:12:00] own.

I love the This blog post, because as a child, I loved looking through the almanac. I thought it was just so fascinating, but you have a a concept on here called browsable nonfiction. And, and the almanac is a great example of that because browsable nonfiction is where you can just open any page and read a section of it.

And then put that book down, you don't have to read it cover to cover, which I think makes it very approachable to students. So how did you come up with with that, with that phrase?

Melissa Taylor: I borrowed it from Melissa Stewart, who's a nonfiction author and researcher. She figured out that there are five kinds of nonfiction, and like you mentioned, there's browsable, which is that short chunks, digestible, you can start reading anywhere in any order.

There's active, which is a cooking or craft type of books. There's the traditional nonfiction books, which are topic based, so something about dogs or cars. There's expository, which is topical, but [00:13:00] it's This focus on the writing craft, so there's more lyricism and beautiful language and vivid verbs, and then finally the last category is narrative nonfiction, so that's where it is still nonfiction, but it's written like a story.

So there's one I just read by Deborah Hopkinson, it's called Evidence, and it's about a scientist who figured out where cholera was coming from, and Victorian London. So it's, it's interesting to also, when we're thinking about giving kids access to non fiction, that we have a variety of non fictions.

So those different kinds are really important. But back to the browsable non fiction really quick is, the reason I like the Almanac and other books like it the, the non, let's see, what is it, Weird, Weird but true books that is that kids like my oldest who maybe were reluctant readers can just start reading anywhere about something that they want to read about.

They don't have to read cover to cover about every single thing, but if they're really interested in the solar system, there's a [00:14:00] section for that. And that's so appealing to kids because it's giving them ownership over what they're reading and it's making it super accessible. To them.

Shannon Betts: We heard a term to the summer in the book strive for five conversations by Cabel and Zucker.

That was dual purpose books that kind of bridge the line between fiction and nonfiction like magic school bus where there's a ton of facts, but then there's also this fantasy element to it as well and they don't fit easily into either category. So you also I really like. I mean, you have so many blog posts of just like, these are the nonfiction books that I think third graders would like.

These are the nonfiction books that second graders would like. And, you know, these are the ones for boys and girls and, you know people who really like Harry Potter should try these nonfiction books. And you recommended the Who Will Win books and my second grade resource class last year. I mean, they read that book every single day.

I mean, we knew who won. It was the squid was going to win and the other shark was going to [00:15:00] win and things like that and they would still be like so excited and they would read each fact in each caption with so much interest. I mean, they were never tired of this book. It was amazing.

Melissa Taylor: And it's cool because it's written out of, I think, is it fourth, fifth grade?

If you look up, it's pretty advanced. Lexile level is pretty high and, and it's so motivating to kids that they will keep trying and they, and they do it. It's so amazing. I love that about that series. Yeah,

Shannon Betts: if y'all aren't aware, it's like the one that we read was all about ocean creatures. I don't even know if they have other ones.

But the one that was on the site. Okay, that's cool. I need to get some other ones then. But the one that was in the sacred class was ocean creatures. And so we would pit it was sort of like a wrestling match sort of thing and it would pit two different ocean creatures together and say, okay, who would win in a battle of strength or wit, you know, or whatever.

You know, whatever protective thing that they had, that nature had given them to [00:16:00] protect them from predators, like which one would win in that battle. And then it would have them all in like sort of like a March Madness round where, you know, okay, in this clump, you know, these would finally all win.

And then those winners would match the other winners. And then you would finally, at the end of the book, have the final winner. And it taught the students so much. Even though they were just excited to see who wins, and there was that competitive element, and that excitement, so much background knowledge.

about habitats and environments, right? And I mean, just tons of things that you almost feel like a little bit like an oceanographer or something reading that after reading this book, because you've sort of built in a bunch of facts about these creatures to kind of understand which one would, would win in that nature battle.

Mary Saghafi: I would love to chat a little bit about imagination soup because I think this is a fantastic resource for teachers and parents alike. As a [00:17:00] teacher, I would have loved to have been able to easily browse and and pick some titles and have some titles to recommend. And then as a parent, we were sort of chatting before we started recording.

I. Prone to setting out lots of different types of books for my, my daughters to read and they love it. So our coffee table is constantly filled with different titles. And some of them are for my younger daughter who I'm really hoping to kind of just spark a little bit of interest. If she could, she would read everything.

Any book about cats, fiction or nonfiction. She loves learning about cats and she's been this way since about age one. So we've, we've been on this journey for a while. My older daughter who I have chatted about a lot on the podcast. She. is just a kid who will pick up any book and is naturally curious about many, many, many topics, but she's never intimidated by books.

And so giving her the opportunity to just pick up a book and start reading is really exciting for [00:18:00] her. So what I love is that you have so many lists And also lists that would be really helpful for teachers. So we just finished a conference for one of my kiddos and we were talking about how to work on inferences.

And so you even have some, some books that teachers can use to work on inferences. You have a book list for the best nonfiction books for kids of all ages. And then you also have it broken down into other ages. And so your. Your blog posts are really detailed, but also pretty easy to navigate. If you're looking for a specific type of category for your students, but you might want to have some new titles.

So any other information that you would love to pass on to our listeners about about your, your work that you do.

Shannon Betts: I'm going to add real quick, my favorite list is short nonfiction books for reluctant, struggling, and wiggly readers. Yeah,

Melissa Taylor: clear that you have

Shannon Betts: worked with children. That was, yeah,

Melissa Taylor: I know a [00:19:00] few of those.

And also my daughter, who's yes, to this day, she's 22. And she's still like, lays on the floor and feet are everywhere, you know, like, it's legs, it's just not that she's not going to ever sit in a chair, like, With your feet on the ground, I'll just say, and that's fine, she's very smart. Yeah I just, it's sort of, as I get new books, sometimes it inspires me to make lists about certain topics.

I try to do I have lists about mentor texts for writing workshop. I have lists about, like you said so many things. A lot of times. People will ask me, you know, send me emails and ask me for a list and that'll inspire me to make a list just because they're really curious. I just, I'm working on one now of old picture books for older readers because a librarian was saying like, what do I read aloud in library class?

So I'll have that posted soon. So there's, I hope something for everyone. And if you use the search bar, you can find it. Especially now [00:20:00] that Google's making things so hard to find, it's easier just to go to Imagination Soup and use the search bar for the topic that you want. I sometimes Google this, I'll say the topic like, cats, and then Imagination Soup would find my list that way.

But yeah, I like that. I think it's just so important that we hook kids with their interests first and foremost so that then it's a gateway if they're only reading about cats that's fine then we can read fiction and nonfiction about cats and and then what about cats in space maybe a little sci fi it so we explore different genres I think that's the way in for most kids right just to have From A lot of choice based because not every kid's going to like the same book and that's okay.

Shannon Betts: You mentioned earlier about teaching students how to determine importance. And from my teaching experience, I know that's considered like a comprehension strategy. And there's some people in sort of the science of reading camp that are like, we should not do teach strategies explicitly. We should only be doing building background knowledge and [00:21:00] schema knowledge based curriculum.

And then. We're in the both and camp where we're like, okay, there's a space for like, yes, we need to add more nonfiction to their diet, but we also need to teach students the strategies that will help them unlock the, you know, most important understandings from this text. And then also, I think what was missing from comprehensive strategy instruction in the past was make sure it's flexible comprehension strategy usage, which What I've always taught the comprehensive strategy since like my second year in the career, but I don't know if I always taught that flexibility to the students.

They thought that we were only doing inferencing during the unit, you know, like, and I needed to ask questions. Right, right. We've already moved on from asking questions and making connections. So now we're on inferencing and we're only doing that. And so we need to help the students understand that this is like tools we're adding to their toolbox and they, You know, they're never not going to use a hammer just because they now know how to use a wrench like there's times when a hammer is used.

There's [00:22:00] times when a wrench is used. There's times when pliers are used. It's the right tool for the right job. And we need to teach them how to use each tool explicitly. But then also, I guess a lot through thinking aloud and some of our reading modeling. And shared reading to show the students how we use those strategies flexibly ourselves

Melissa Taylor: to

Shannon Betts: show that transfer, right?

Oh, those think alouds are so important. So what are some of the strategies? I know we've just listed some of them because IU always used strategies that work. That was like, Steph Harvey and good vest was like that was sort of my Bible for teaching the coverage and strategies. But yeah, I worked for Ellen Keene for a while.

Oh, yes, mosaic of thought. Oh my god, you know her. That's amazing.

Melissa Taylor: She hired me to be the literacy instructor for that her nonprofit pvc. Oh,

Shannon Betts: see, I really like it bothered me that she was called out in the knowledge gap book that like I was like, kind of. how to be a better teacher from her. Same. [00:23:00]

Melissa Taylor: Especially when you see kids improving as readers.

Yep. It's, we don't need to throw the baby out with the bath. No. Like I said, I think it's really a flexibility

Shannon Betts: thing. It's just, we kind of, we kind of boxed in the students a little bit too much and didn't show them. that overall purpose of why they were learning these strategies, right? Right,

Melissa Taylor: right. Yeah.

And so it's just, I think you're, I love the idea of both. And I do that with my therapist. But it's the same thing in reading. So I mentioned determining importance, but that leads to summarizing. Because if you can know what's important, then you can summarize, which I always thought some kids are natural retellers, the ones who you ask about the movie, and it takes them 20 minutes.

And they still haven't really gotten to the point, and and, and so summarizing is really harder for those kids, but if you can teach them how to figure out what's important, then you're going to be able to teach them how to summarize and like you said, asking questions, that's, we should be doing that all the time.

We are [00:24:00] connecting to background knowledge all the time. All those things you're doing in fiction and non fiction are, yeah. are essential for what good readers do, right? And so I, I also think teaching kids how to ask questions beyond literal, literal, like, inferential questions and, and then I love adding in reflection at the end of everything.

I always think that's immense learning. I'm sure there's some research on that, I hope, about how, how are they doing as readers and what are they thinking about that they're doing well or they want to improve on. And if you can be metacognitive and name the comprehension strategies, if you could, all the things that you're doing in the reading workshop, then that helps them as, as learners.

Shannon Betts: That's so true because I have always naturally done that as a strong reader myself. Like if I read a really touching fiction book and I get to that last page, you know, and I close it and I take a few minutes to just sort of [00:25:00] let the feeling of that book wash over me and how that book goes. Yeah. Has affected my life and how it maybe has given me a new perspective on the world and how other people think and Build my empathy skills and things like that I don't just like close it and like move on straight away and then when I read non fiction I take that second as well and I just sort of I'm filtering, you know, you know, what I think I should remember from it, and I'm sorting that information, and I'm filing it in my different mental files, and we take for granted that students naturally know how to do that, and they don't.

They think, oh, I like pizza, so I'm going to remember all the pizza details from this book, you know?

Melissa Taylor: Yeah, not to mention that it's important to teach That nonfiction still has a bias. And that's the informational literacy piece that's in Common Core and that we're, you know, being more thoughtful about, I think, in recent years about what is the sort, what are the sources that the author used for this book?

What are the biases? What's the [00:26:00] expertise? That, looking at those, like, understanding primary sources and secondary sources and understanding that even nonfiction has a perspective.

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Shannon Betts: Feeling overwhelmed about all the demands of your students. Looking for more resources and strategies to help your readers?

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Shannon Betts: Watch us model effective strategies and techniques. Reference the resource library to find curated sources for our favorite activities. Learn from and participate in our deep dive topics where we share specifics about our instruction, such as classroom management, assessment, introducing sight words, teaching, writing, and so much more.

Mary Saghafi: You'll have the confidence and [00:27:00] tools to know that you're working smarter, not harder, to meet your students needs. Feel better about your teaching today by checking out the various levels of support offered through www. patreon. com backslash Reading Teachers Lounge.

Shannon Betts: We're here to help you and your students.

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Shannon Betts: Oh my God. That's so important. I saw one of my favorite shows is CBS Sunday morning and they did a segment about I think it wasn't, I think it was a school. It's a schools in Finland that they actually teach information bias starting in kindergarten as. like a whole set of standards of teaching them like, is this really facts or not?

How can you double check that this is really true and that you can trust the source? And that they're doing that from the lowest readers, you know, from the day they start reading onward to make sure that they have an informed population, which. I mean, like, the journalist doing the story was like, oh my gosh, I don't think adults I know could do this.

I know, I know.

Melissa Taylor: Yeah, it's so important. I mean, [00:28:00] just, we were talking before the show started about the Google searches, and I have, It's about 1 in 10 people that I talk to that realize they're getting fed absolute garbage right now. It is the work like Reddit. Why is Reddit coming up? Oh, because Google owns it.

That is actually Reddit from 2012 doesn't have the most up to date information and it's just some random people's opinion. But it seems like people just are so used to Trusting and they're not analyzing, but they're not being critical thinkers of even that. And I think last week the the internet archives were hacked and that means that they can be changed.

So any information now online should be suspect because it could have been hacked or changed to be not true.

Mary Saghafi: Scary. This is a conversation that I think it weaves in and out of my circles sometimes, but this is really the importance of librarians and people who are, [00:29:00] I don't, I don't want to say gatekeepers because that's not the right word, but like people who guide you through the information pathway.

Librarians are so underrated in that they are actually quite skilled in helping you to find out sources that are valid and, and accurate and and how to kind of poke into the holes that we should be critically thinking as we're, as we're looking at nonfiction and and other texts. I think it's just such a piece that we don't always explain, but I have always said I've loved librarians because they, they bring this really unique perspective.

And I think teacher librarians are quite unique as well. My mother in law is actually a teacher librarian. She worked actually at a medical school. And so it's kind of a unique Perspective, but the conversations that we have about how to teach critical thinking skills are so unique and so important.

And even working [00:30:00] with our youngest learners, they want to be investigators. They love proving adults wrong. This is not, you know, this is not something that is hard to teach or hard to get buy in for. It is. Something that kids naturally do kids naturally want to, you know, be discoverers of facts of discoverers of new concepts and ideas, and then be able to prove them.

And so I often think about how kids are thinking about dinosaurs and and they have the solution. They know exactly why the dinosaurs disappeared. And then you need to teach them how, you know, well, how can we prove this? How can you find information to support your, you know, understanding of why the dinosaurs, because we haven't quite discovered exactly why the dinosaurs have disappeared as a whole group of people.

But, you know, I know a couple five year olds who are sure they know which again, which again really feeds this like. Having conversations using nonfiction [00:31:00] texts will help them to be successful adults in life because of all of these skills that we're developing critical thinking vocabulary building background knowledge, you know, challenging with with more difficult texts, all of this I think comes full circle.

Melissa Taylor: Yeah, even the youngest of learners, right? So if your kids are playing pretend when they're toddlers and preschoolers, if you read a nonfiction book about whatever they're pretend playing, let's say they're pretending that they're playing auto mechanic, and you read them a nonfiction book that tells them words and concepts about that, then the pretend play will be more robust and it'll be longer.

So it's just important for all ages.

Shannon Betts: Have you heard of the term refutational text?

Mary Saghafi: No.

Shannon Betts: So that's like those kind of books where like if somebody writes a book that proves that a dolphin is a mammal instead of a fish, you know, and a lot of kindergartners and first graders believe that [00:32:00] dolphins are fish because they're in the ocean.

And that's the way that there's been some recent research that shows that that's the best way to correct misconceptions. In students minds is to like, kind of be confronted straight away with that misconception of like, you think a dolphin is a fish, but I'm about to show you X, Y, Z of why you're wrong.

And that that's the way to kind of break their, you know, the hold of that wrong fact in their mind.

Melissa Taylor: Interesting. It's really interesting to give it to adults too. Yeah. Yeah. That's great. So even like Pluto, I think there's a few books I've read on.

Shannon Betts: I'm sorry. Pluto is still a planet to me because it's

Mary Saghafi: just

Shannon Betts: a dwarf

Mary Saghafi: planet.

We can come to understand that it has qualities of a planet and yet it's quite dwarfed in size. How about that?

Melissa Taylor: Or Pluto.

Mary Saghafi: This is so [00:33:00] helpful and so engaging. And I think that this conversation is exactly right for the Reading Teachers Lounge. Like, I, I would love for this conversation to continue in other teachers lounges so that teachers can look up, You know, book lists and say, Oh, I'm using this, this nonfiction book to teach this.

And I feel like that just really helps. We have such great quality texts available to us these days, and the ability to search this out so quickly and and get it to us in a very fast way. And so I just really appreciate the hard work and dedication that you've put forth on your blog, and and explaining and expressing and sharing with us today.

So we would love to get some more questions from teachers. And so if you do want to reach out to us Please email us directly or reach out to us on our social media platforms directly and, and we can connect [00:34:00] you. But also Melissa will put your credentials and everything in our, in our show notes and make sure that people can easily access to imagination soup and and find you on the social media platforms as well.

Melissa Taylor: Thank you so much for having me. This conversation was so. Fun. I could, we could talk, probably talk for another few hours about this. We could

Mary Saghafi: definitely talk about this for hours on end. I would love to, and I'd love to just keep browsing and browsing your lists of books as well. It's been so fun.

Thank you.

Shannon Betts: Yeah. Thank you, Melissa. Like I mean, I've been in the field a long time. I've been teaching since 2002. I was obviously trained for five years before that in college and I just learned this summer. That the state standards and the Common Core recommend 50 percent or more nonfiction in a student's reading diet.

And I was a Common Core coach and a standards trainer, and I, I don't know how that got missed from my training to then give to teachers, but I never shared that statistic. When I reflect back on my own classroom [00:35:00] libraries at different grade levels that I've taught, I don't, I didn't have 50 percent nonfiction.

Melissa Taylor: My I didn't either and I didn't do read alouds that were nonfiction, which you forget like, oh, right, that would be really good too. So I mean, unless I was specifically teaching a topic. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Oh, okay. We're doing life. So let's throw

Shannon Betts: in a few books about life cycles, but not just this. And, and I mean, really, you know, I taught kindergarten and first grade, like you said, those are those years where, I mean, Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That they are the most curious, right? And I mean, they want, when the, when chosen, you know, a bunch of books on a table, they're going to go to the nonfiction probably because they're interested in those photographs and those topics. And it's what a lost opportunity, right? And so I just want to say to everybody listening you know, no, no shame or blame because I, you know, I want to be given grace, my past self to be given grace for this as well.

But think about the percentage of. of, you know, the genres that you're exposing the students to and giving them [00:36:00] experience with. And just reflect on that and say, is it 50 50? Or if you're teaching upper grades, the standards say it should be skewed in the direction of nonfiction. It should maybe be 60 40, right?

And if, if it's, if, if, after you self reflect, if it's not to that percentage, what are some easy little moves you can do to increase that percentage? of nonfiction for your students. Go to Imagination Soup, get a bunch of different titles for the age group that you work with and the reading levels that you work with.

Go to the local library if you don't have the funds to purchase these books or write a grant on DonorsChoose in add those books, or go to your school librarian and media specialist and say, would you help me find some more nonfiction books? And you can check them out. I mean, they used to let us check out, I think, 50 titles, you know, as a classroom teacher, and you could add immediately 50 [00:37:00] titles to your library.

So that's my challenge to listeners. Great, Shannon. Do better than past Shannon. And just, you know, give your students more nonfiction, put those in front of the books. That's step one. And then step two is teach them how to access that nonfiction text, right? Like, get, provide them the comprehension strategies and teach them about the how to use those text features to locate the information that they need.

Melissa Taylor: Exactly. Yeah, and, and you're going to be really setting them up for success as, as readers and learners as they, as they grow through the great, great levels that are going to be primarily nonfiction.

Shannon Betts: And lifelong learners. I mean, if you look back on my Atlanta library, check out history, you will see.

All the hobbies and interests and life choices that I made over the past two decades. I mean, there was, you know, for a couple months, I was checking out a lot of books about tennis when I [00:38:00] joined the, you know, tennis team. And then I was checking, I was getting a bunch of books about mortgages and finding houses, you know, when I bought my first house and a bunch of books about parenting, became a parent and then about child nutrition.

And that's because I, I knew. You know, that helped, nonfiction helps you be a lifelong learner, right?

Melissa Taylor: Yes.

Shannon Betts: You know, because we're not going to go back to school and learn all these things, but we can just go to a bookstore or a library and get a bunch of books and, and learn the facts that we need to know from other experts, which is just so special about nonfiction.

So thank you for, thank you for all the work you're doing on your website. And we really appreciate you coming on to the Rean Teacher Zones and sharing it with our audience. So.

Melissa Taylor: It's been a delight. Thank you for having me, Shannon and Mary.