Resources to Teach Nonfiction Text Structure and the Olympics

My plan today was to share some resources I found to teach the Olympics.  I saw several people had some great posts about teaching nonfiction text structures, so I thought I would share on both.

We have been reading biographies and practicing nonfiction reading skills.  I now plan on covering Nonfiction Text Structures. In order to introduce Nonfiction Text Structures, I will first have my students watch this video from Learnzillion.  If you have not checked out Learnzillion, it is a great free website with Common Core aligned video lessons.

We will complete an overview lesson on all of the text structures, and then individual lessons from Erin's Interactive Informational Reading Notebook.  We have been focusing lately on compare and contrast, so we will start with this text structure.

She has great exemplar paragraphs in her writing notebook as well.  Teaching with a Mountain View had a great post on how she used Erin's resources.

Comprehension Connection had a great post today with mentor text suggestions for each text structure. I am excited to use the handout she mentions from Ms. Jordan Reads as a quick reference for my students.

Jivey had a great post today on using Text Structures.

I will also pull additional passages from www.readworks.org for additional practice with each text structure if need be. 

I had already decided that this week and next week we would talk about the Olympics.  We started on Friday by watching Time Warp Trip: My Big Fat Greek Olympics.  You can watch it in 3 parts on Youtube. Then, my students had to read about a country and an individual from that country. We had to cancel a field trip at the last minute, so I made this handout at the last minute. You can get a free copy here.  I also printed out different flags for them to color that I found online.

Today my students read "The Olympics: Then and Now" on www.raz-kids.com.  It is a multi-level reader, so it made for a perfect read since I had to take a sick day today. 

Teaching Star Students shared a list of website links for having students research the Olympics.

The resource I am the most excited about is Ashleigh's Olympic Close Reading pack.  It is one of the best resources I have EVER purchased.  She put so much time into it.  Every passage is written at three levels with three different question sets for 3 different close reads.  We will be using her pack to practice close reading, discuss the Olympics, and practice recognizing text structure. 

I also purchased Erin's Data Pack to practice map and graphic skills.

What resources are you using to cover the Olympics in your classroom?