Writing Nonfiction Reviews guides your students step by step through the process of writing effective reviews of informational texts. Instructions, activities, examples, videos, interactives, and downloads help students learn new skills for analyzing informational texts and writing about them. You can also present this unit right from your interactive whiteboard.
First students warm up by reading and responding to a nonfiction article that describes the origin of Superman. Then students read sample paragraph and essay reviews about the nonfiction book Shipwreck at the Bottom of the World. After responding to the readings, students are ready to write their own responses to a nonfiction book:
- Prewriting activities help students choose a favorite nonfiction book and gather key details about it.
- Writing activities help students write a beginning paragraph that grabs the reader's interest, names the book and the author, and gives a focus statement for the review. The middle paragraphs provide key details from the book to support and develop the focus statement. The ending paragraph thoughtfully wraps up the review.
- Revising activities help students replace general details with specific ones and combine short sentences to improve flow. Students also learn to get a peer review and use a checklist to improve their reviews.
- Editing activities help students get rid of comma splices and correctly punctuate titles of books. Students use an editing checklist to find and fix common errors.
- Publishing activities help students create a clean final copy of their review and reflect on what they have learned.