This January, 6th graders in Ms. Rambo’s and Mrs. Kinyon’s classes are taking their study of text features to the next level as they prepare for reading nonfiction. Understanding how each type of text feature communicates different types of information is fundamental to literacy.

This week students are designing textbooks about themselves.  In order to make a textbook, students must know the different types of text features and how they help a reader better understand the subject, in this case - the student. Given a list of eight text features - table of contents; heading; subheading; chart, graph, or map; picture w/ a caption; bolded words; glossary; index; title page - students will decide in which order to place their text features to best communicate information about themselves. 

Arly Curiel Lopez found the creative aspect of the textbook project really fun. “I find remembering this stuff kind of hard and this helped me to understand it.”

Students will also be performing text-feature surgery over the next few days. After assessing an article, text features are removed from the article and transplanted onto the patient and affixed with sutures (bandaids). A written summary wraps up the activity. Harrison Jansson said, “It helped me because I could physically see the text features and how they work together. It wasn't just being told about them.” Mackenzie Marlow added, “It was a fun way to learn, and we got to cut up the books!  It felt really wrong, but Mrs. Kinyon said it was okay because we were learning.”

Check out the photos here and on social media.