Looking for fun ways to teach nonfiction and help students build their nonfiction reading comprehension skills without adding another worksheet to the pile?
Whether you're teaching nonfiction text features and text structures, working on main idea and supporting details, practicing note-taking and listening comprehension, or simply trying to get students to read more informational text, nonfiction practice doesn't have to feel like a chore.
Here are 7 easy and engaging nonfiction activities you can try in your upper elementary or middle school classroom.
1. Start With Something Weird
Put a strange-but-true fact on the board: Wombat poop is cube-shaped.
Then ask one question: WHY?
Instant curiosity.
Use weird facts as bell-ringers, writing prompts, discussion starters, or introductions to short nonfiction texts to encourage students to read nonfiction and figure out the answer.
Need material? Bookmark National Geographic Kids' Weird But True, Smithsonian Magazine, Wonderopolis, and Guinness World Records. Search topics kids can't resist: strange animals, accidental inventions, unbelievable history, mysteries, extreme weather, space, the human body, and bizarre world records.
The rule is simple: If it makes you say, “Wait...WHAT?” kids will probably want to read about it.
2. Let Them Doodle While They Read
Reading comprehension doesn't always have to have the same formula: read, answer questions, turn it in.
Give doodling a job instead.
Ask students to sketch an important idea, illustrate a vocabulary word, add details to a diagram, make a visual connection, or draw something that will help them remember what they've learned.
The doodling isn't replacing comprehension. It's showing comprehension.
That's the idea behind my Leveled Nonfiction Reading Doodle Passages. Doodle tasks are woven right into each passage, giving students opportunities to stop, think, and visually process what they're learning as they read.
Even better? Each topic comes in three reading levels, making it easy to differentiate while everyone explores the same topic.
3. Connect nonfiction to everything else they're learning.
Nonfiction doesn't have to live exclusively in ELA. In fact, some of the best opportunities are hiding in other subjects.
* Science: Read about the bizarre animal adaptation before teaching adaptations.
* Social Studies: Read a first-person account or unusual historical story before beginning a unit.* Math: Find an article containing interesting statistics and have students interpret the numbers.
* Art: Read about the artist, culture, technique, or historical period before creating.
* Music: Explore the history of an instrument or genre.
* Health: Investigate sleep, stress, nutrition, exercise, or the brain.
* Technology: Read about an invention before students design something themselves.
If you're an ELA teacher, ask the science and social studies teachers what they're teaching next month. Then find nonfiction that connects. Students get extra background knowledge. Your colleagues will think you're wonderful. Everybody wins.
4. Give Independent Reading a Nonfiction Makeover
How many students automatically reach for fiction during independent reading?
Mix things up by occasionally challenging everyone to: READ SOMETHING TRUE.
Biography. Sharks. Sports. Space. Fashion. History. Inventions. Disasters. Music. The Titanic. Video games. Whatever interests them.
Then ditch the traditional book report.
Have students create a Doodle Nonfiction Book Review filled with important ideas, interesting facts, new vocabulary, connections, a summary, illustrations, and their own rating and review.
My Doodle Nonfiction Book Review includes a step-by-step planning guide before students turn their thinking into a visual doodle review.
5. Play “Would You Rather?” — Nonfiction Edition
Would you rather...
- Explore the deepest ocean OR travel to space?
- Live in Ancient Rome OR Ancient Egypt?
- Experience a hurricane OR an earthquake?
There's just one rule: You have to read before you decide.
Give students short nonfiction texts about both choices. Then have them make a decision and support it with evidence.
Suddenly, reading has a purpose.
They're gathering ammunition for an argument.
And that tends to get kids interested.
6. Don't Just Read Nonfiction. Listen to It!
We spend a lot of time teaching reading comprehension.
But listening comprehension matters, too.
Every once in a while, take away the copies and say:
“Just listen.”
Read an engaging nonfiction passage aloud while students take notes. Teach them to listen for important ideas, key details, unfamiliar vocabulary, and information they may need to remember.
Then let students compare notes.
What did you catch? What did I miss? What did we both think mattered?
Finish with small-group discussion cards or a few comprehension questions.
My Listening Comprehension lesson about Malala Yousafzai follows this exact process: students learn what to listen for, practice taking notes, work with key vocabulary, and answer multiple-choice and short-answer questions.
Once students know the routine, use it with articles, podcasts, biographies, or nonfiction connected to whatever you're studying.
7. Make Nonfiction a Mystery
Don't tell students what they're reading about.
Instead, reveal clues as they read and ask them to figure it out.
It can live for hundreds of years.
It doesn't have a brain.
It has survived multiple mass extinction events.
What is it?
Now students aren't just reading. They're collecting evidence, making inferences, revising predictions, and trying to solve something.
Sneaky, sneaky.
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Hopefully, these ideas have you thinking about a few easy ways to sneak more nonfiction into your classroom. If you’d like some ready-to-go help, here are the Brain Waves resources mentioned in this post:
Nonfiction Listening Comprehension Unit
Doodle Nonfiction Reading Passages
And here's a FREEBIE! 12 classroom posters all about nonfiction text features!
Thanks for stopping by!
Mary Beth
P.S. Find more nonfiction freebies here!
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