Susan Ramsay | Sep 06, 2017


What roosts but isn’t a rooster? What, when startled, sounds like a purring lion? What looks like a giant bumble bee when it begins flying five days after birth?

If you guessed ruffed grouse you have probably gone walking in the woods and also done some research about these chicken-sized North American birds. You are part of the adult majority who reads and writes more non-fiction than fiction. Our use of the internet alone suggests that we seek vast amounts of factual information. If we, as adults, are persistent in our search for work-related information, entertainment, recipes, vacation destinations, news and weather, road conditions, and the scoop on ruffed grouse who drum their wings in a flurry of emotion only to disappear like Houdini into the trees, it stands to reason that children also want to know more about the world around them.
Informational text is factual writing about our nature and society. In primary classrooms and at home we have typically shied away from using a lot of informational text with very young children. Fearing children will find the words boring, we have relied on fictional stories with strong characters and plot to hook children into reading. Research by Ruth Yopp and Hallie Yopp published in 2006 showed that almost half of the children in their home study had two or fewer informational books read to them by their families over a 7 month time span. Similarly, teachers overwhelming preferred fictional stories. Their research with children in preschool to grade three classrooms showed that only 8% of the read-alouds shared by teachers were informational texts with an additional 1% of the read-alouds being mixed texts such as “The Magic School Bus” series in which storytelling is woven into factual information. (Source http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1207/s15548430jlr3801_2)

Though publication of research may lag behind changing practices, their research draws our attention to the ways in which we support children’s literacy and learning needs. In the early years children have insatiable curiousity about their world. Their curiousity propels them to ask questions, explore ideas and seek answers. Non-fiction books and print materials are laid out differently from storybooks. Through exposure to informational text, children develop different strategies for interacting with the text to learn new things. They discover how to zero in on specific information using photo and text boxes, table of contents, page numbers, section headings and more.
Popular thinking has suggested that girls prefer storybooks and boys prefer factual books. We are discovering, however, that if given the choice, both boys and girls will pick informational text over narrative stories almost half the time (Kletzien & Szabo 1998).

Reading factual books with young children doesn’t mean we have to give up the beautiful illustrations, large print, and accessible vocabulary we have come to expect from high quality storybooks.
“Bugs” written by Sarah Goodman is a Fandex Field Guide with 48 individually die-cut images of the world’s most fascinating creepy crawlies. The guide is perfect for young hands to hold and includes their habitat, scientific name, life cycle, fascinating facts and more. Similar field guides have been published about “Wildflowers” by Ruth Rogers Clausen, “Birds” by Michael Robbins, and “Trees” by Steven Aronson.
“What Do You Do With a Tail Like This” by Steve Jenkins explores the amazing things that different species of animals do with their noses, eyes, ears, mouths, feet and tails.
Reading informational texts with your child can boost their literacy skills, satisfy their curiousity, boost their desire to read for pleasure, and strengthen their sense of humour. Jokes are only funny if you know the relevant facts.
So if your five-year asks, “Why do hummingbirds hum?” you may want to act puzzled. And when your child giggles and tells you, “Because they don’t know the words!” you can be assured that sharing informational text with your child has been time well spent.

September 8, 2017 is International Literacy Day

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