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6. Nonfiction Writing: Procedures and Reports
by Lucy Calkins and Laurie Pessah
In this unit, children learn how to write two different kinds of non-fiction texts: How-To and All-About books. Children begin by studying published examples of each of these kinds of books, examining their structure. Then they draft, revise, and edit their own writing in the same structure, with the help of graphic organizers and peer-conferring.
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PART ONE: Writing How-To Books
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| Session I: |
Introducing How-To Books
In this session you will tell students that they will be teachers as well as writers; specifically, they will write to teach others how to do something.
 View Session I
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| Session II: |
Checking for Clarity
Your plan will be to help children understand the purpose and requirements of this genre by showing them that How-To writing must enable a reader to do what is being taught.
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| Session III: |
Revising Words and Pictures
In this lesson, you will show how you tried to read one child's directions, how you encountered confusions, and how the author will revise his words and pictures to make them more explicit.
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| Session IV: |
Incorporating Features of How-To Writing
You will teach your children that as writers of How-To books, they probably want to give their readers "helpers," as you call the text features of this genre.
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| Session V: |
Revising: Learning from a Variety of How-To Writing
You will remind children that the world is full of a huge variety of How-To texts and that they can learn lessons for their own writing by studying these.
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| Session VI: |
Editing: Using Periods, Parentheses, and Colons
You will want to ask your children to select one text to publish. They will need to double-check their revisions of that book and then turn their attention to editing. A celebration will follow.
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PART TWO: Writing All-About Books
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| Session VII: |
Introducing All-About Books
In this minilesson, your children will study the whole text of The Pumpkin Book to glimpse the overall structure of informational (or "All-About") writing.
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| Session VIII: |
Structuring All-About Books: The Table of Contents
In this minilesson, you will ask each child to anticipate the chapters he or she might write on a topic and to draft a Table of Contents.
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| Session IX: |
Planning Each Chapter: Choosing Papers and Structures
You will show children that in some of their chapters they might teach readers how to do something and, if so, they will need how-to paper. You will show them that in other chapters they might teach readers that there are different kinds of something and, if so, they will need paper that matches that genre.
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| Session X: |
Making Labeled Diagrams
You will reinforce the lesson from the previous session and teach that sometimes writers want to teach readers about the different parts of a thing.
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| Session XI: |
Making Texts that Teach
In this minilesson, you will teach children that nonfiction writers need to include facts that teach in their writing and that they do research by learning from books on their topics.
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| Session XII: |
Learning from Each Other's Writing
You will teach children that they can learn not only from published authors but from each other as well.
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| Session XIII: |
Revising: Fitting Information into Writing
You will suggest that writers reread and revise nonfiction writing, asking, "Does anything in this chapter belong elsewhere?"
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| Session XIV: |
Editing: Becoming Resourceful Word Solvers
In this minilesson, you will teach children how to be resourceful word solvers as they face bigger words.
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| Session XV: |
Celebrating Nonfiction Writing: Ceremonial Book Placement
In today's celebration, children will carefully put their books on the shelves of the school library.
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