Helping Your Child Understand Nonfiction

Kids are naturally drawn to nonfiction books but sometimes reading them can be tricky for kids. Read on to learn about some of my favorite reading strategies to help kids understand nonfiction texts better.

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We recently went on our spring break trip to the beach. Since the weather was a little too cold for us to get out on the beach, we spent time exploring a small nature museum where my kids got to watch a snake eat a rat (which they were fascinated by). They were also super excited about visiting the SC State Aquarium and learning more about fish, sea turtles, and more. They were mesmerized by the large tanks filled with gigantic fish and sharks. They loved learning about the things they can do to help sea turtles. This aquarium also has many opportunities to touch creatures like sea stars, sea urchins, and even sting rays.

One afternoon when it was a tad bit warmer, we went on a dolphin tour. We boarded a small boat that we shared with another family and set off in search of dolphins. It took a while to find some but when we did, my kids were amazed as they watched them swim around the boat and take small leaps out of the water. My three-year-old was a little sad that the captain kept steering the boat away so the dolphins didn’t get too close. My son kept saying that he wanted the dolphins to leap into the air and jump on the boat. We talked about how that was not likely to happen and how that wouldn’t be safe for the dolphins. While he said he understood, he said he was still a little sad.

The visits to the nature museum, aquarium, and the dolphin tour sparked a new curiosity for my kids about dolphins and other sea animals. As soon as we returned home, my daughter gathered all of her books about dolphins and sea life. They have both spent a great deal of time reading and looking at images to learn more about the sea life they experienced on our trip. They are so excited each time they learn something new or even when they read about the same thing in different books. Fueled by their natural curiosity about the world, reading nonfiction or informational texts can be so motivating for kids. It can also be a challenge. Here are some of my favorite reading strategies to help them understand nonfiction texts better:

Notice What Repeats

You can teach your child to notice what repeats. This strategy can help your child identify the main idea or the main topic of a text. Easier to read books (think below level J if you are familiar with reading levels), may only have a main topic like football. More challenging books will most likely have a main idea (football is an important American pastime).

How to:

You can tell your child that in order to figure out what a book is mostly about, it’s helpful to pay attention to the word, words, or phrases they see again and again.
On each page, notice what repeats. Think, “Does this word tell me what the book is mostly about?”

For example, in Untamed: The Wild Life of Jane Goodall, Anita Silvey shares story after story about Jane’s close observation of and care for a variety of animals. Each of these stories reinforces the main idea that Jane Goodall was driven by her strong desire to deeply understand as much as possible about animals.

You can encourage your child to notice what repeats by saying/asking:

What words repeat on each page?
What repeats on each page in the pictures?
What is the book mostly about?
What is the main topic?
Look for what’s the same.
Put a finger on any words that are the same on these couple of pages.
You found a repeating word! Now, what is the topic/main idea?

Keep Questioning

You can teach your child to consistently ask, “How do I know?” By continuing to ask this question, your child will be thinking about the main idea and the supporting details. In order to find the details in the text that are connected to the main idea being presented, your child will have to sort through all of the details.

How to:

After reading a section or the whole book, ask your child to say what the whole book is mostly about and while they touch their palm.
Then, prompt them to ask, “How do I know?”
Encourage them to go back to the text to say back the facts that are most connected to the idea.
Your child should then say each detail as they touch one of their fingers.

Example lesson: I think this first chapter in Face to Face with Lions is mostly about (touch palm) how even though lions are powerful and dangerous, they are not out to get humans. How do I know? Well, I know because (touch one finger) it says in the book that lions are”quite polite”, It also said that (touch another finger) “any attacker will face powerful weapons of defense”. Also, (touch a 3^rdfinger) they state that they have had trouble with other animals but they never had major problems with lions. All of these facts connect to one main idea.

You can encourage your child to use this strategy by saying/asking:

State your idea.
Name the detail(s) that match the main idea.
Explain how you know.
How does that detail connect to the main idea?
Explain the connection.

Skim the Text

Skimming the text before reading can be incredibly helpful in preparing your child to think about a text before they even begin reading.

How to:

Encourage your child to skim the text by glancing at the big things that jump out visually – the heading(s), title(s), and visual(s).
Then, encourage them to ask, “What does it seem like this text is mostly about?”
Now it’s time for your child to read the text with the main idea in mind.
As they read, your child should check the facts they learn to see if the facts really do fit with the main idea statement they made after skimming the text.
When they finish reading, ask your child to revise their original main idea statement based on the new information they have.

Tip: You can also help your child put together a larger section of text or a whole book by teaching them to skim the table of contents (if available) before reading. Once they skim the table of contents, they can think about what the main idea of the text may be.

You can encourage your child to skim the text by saying/asking:

Look across the page. Tell me what you see.
If you put all of the visuals together, what do you think it’s mostly about?
What of most of the features have in common?
Check the facts to make sure that’s the main idea.
Do you have any changes to make to your main idea statement, after reading the facts?
It seems like that doesn’t quite fit. Revise your thinking.
Great work putting all of the visuals together to figure out what it’s mostly about!

Look at Labels

Often times kids skip over images with labels and don’t realize all of the valuable information that is presented. You can teach your child that labels can help them understand the topic even better.

How to:

Read the text.
Look at the picture.
See what the label is labeling.
Think about how the picture(s), text, and labels all fit together.

In the book Frogs, Elizabeth Carney, the author, uses a lot of labels. On the pages with the heading Toads Are Frogs, Too, we learn the similarities and differences between frogs and toads. She teaches us that frogs have smooth skin and toads have dry, bumpy skin. We then see how their legs and feet are different and how those differences are used for different movements. We can look at the labels and what we read in the text to make a statement about what we learn. For example, we could say “Many frogs have webbed hind feet that help them easily move through and across water, whereas, toads have short, legs designed for walking on land.”

You can encourage your child to pay attention to labels by saying/asking:

Where do you see a label?
Tell me how the facts you learned and the label connect.
How does the label help you?
Put together all the information on the page.
Now that you read the label and saw the picture, go back and read the rest of the page.
Think about how it connects.

Small Words Can Make a Big Difference

Some of the smallest words in the English language can make the biggest difference. These simple words often trip kids up. These connecting words, like and, but, unlike, such as, or, not, and so on.

How to:

As your child reads, encourage them to notice words that connect things like and or
Think, “Is the word being used here linking to a word that means the same thing or something different than the rest of the sentence?”

You can encourage your child to think about connecting words by saying/asking:

Do you see any connector words in this sentence?
Are there any other words in this same sentence that might mean the same as this word?
Because the linking word is ____, you should think that this word is opposite (or same) as what’s in the rest of the sentence.
The author gave you a clue about this word right in the sentence. Check the linking words.

One of my all time favorite strategies is called Read, Cover, Remember, Retell from Linda Hoyt. You can read more about that strategy and three others here.

If you are a classroom teacher, I encourage you to check out Jen Serravallo’s Reading Strategies Book. She includes these strategies and many more described for classroom use.

Hope this helps your child better understand their nonfiction and informational texts. Let me know what you try and how it works.

You can read more about our favorite adventures that spark curiosity and learning here.