Table Of Contents Text Features

What are Text Features? How to Teach Them to Kids

January 20, 2021
What's in a Volume

When people refer to text features, they are mainly talking about features of a nonfiction text. Nonetheless, fiction books also take text features. It's important to teach both when students are learning about books.

Text features are the different parts of a nonfiction or fiction text other than the chief story itself. They help the reader understand the story. Examples of nonfiction text features include captions, index, and glossary. Examples for fiction include pictures, championship, and chapter headings. Go on reading to go a full description of both fiction and nonfiction text features.

Nonfiction Text Features

Nonfiction texts have many different text features to help the reader understand the story. Nosotros have compiled a listing of text features and how they assistance in the understanding.

Title – tells us what the book volition be almost
Table of contents – tells the states about the unlike sections we will exist learning about and what page each section starts on
Glossary – defines words found in the book that might exist difficult
Bolded words – the words that are defined in the glossary or of import words
Captions – sentence describing a moving-picture show
Diagrams – pictures with labels to depict the flick
Labels -word or words used to draw a picture or parts of a picture
Headings – tells when a new department begins and what that section is almost
Index – tells what pages sure words tin can be constitute on in the volume

Teaching Text Features for Nonfiction

Every bit Kindergarten teachers, nosotros spent a few weeks education nonfiction text features. We used Reading Workshop and Writing Workshop simultaneously to teach about the features of nonfiction texts.

Reading Workshop

The first twenty-four hours of this unit of measurement nosotros passed out nonfiction books to each pair of kids in our class. (We looked through the books alee of time and made sure they had many features we would exist learning most.) We had our students await through the books and discuss what they noticed about them. This activity gets students interested in learning about nonfiction texts. We let them know they were looking through nonfiction books, which are books that are real, have facts, and teach u.s. things. Then we talk about some of the features they noticed. For the next few weeks we read different nonfiction books to the students. Nosotros usually read one book for 2 or iii days noticing different text features on each twenty-four hours.

These are some great nonfiction books when teaching about text features. Click on the pictures below to buy from Amazon.

Writing Workshop

We taught our nonfiction unit for reading and writing at the same fourth dimension, so they could apply what they saw in the books we read during Reading Workshop. Our students were always excited to write nonfiction books. We stressed the importance of picking a topic they knew a lot about. The first nonfiction volume the students wrote was very scaffolded. We talked about the features of nonfiction texts that we would include in our books. We included a title, a tabular array of contents, chapter headings, and a labeled diagram. For the start book, everyone wrote a volume titled All Well-nigh Kindergarten. Together nosotros came upward with several capacity they could choose from, then each pupil's book was a little dissimilar. Then they wrote a few sentences for each chapter and we all had a labeled diagram of our classroom at the stop of the book. This took us about a week to finish. At the end, we invited our Pre-G students over, and our students read their books to teach them nigh kindergarten. This was very fun for the kids! Subsequently writing this book, our students were able to pick a nonfiction topic of their choice to write about. We made certain our students knew enough nearly their topic to write a volume (a very brusque volume) virtually it. Click here to purchase our All About book templates.

Fiction Text Features

Fiction books oft don't have equally many text features every bit nonfiction text, but here are a few that yous can find in some fiction books.

Title – tells what the book volition be about
Tabular array of contents – tells the names of each chapter in the book
Chapter headings – tells the title of the chapter
Pictures

How to Teach Text Features for Fiction

Because there aren't equally many text features in fiction books every bit there are in nonfiction, we didn't have a unit focused specifically on them. We did, however, indicate out text features of any fiction books as we were reading them. For example, I used to read a few pages from chapter books at the end of the day right before students got gear up to go home. Every time I started a new book, I showed them the table of contents folio and asked if they knew what that folio was chosen. And then I read each affiliate title to them and noticed the folio numbers we could find them on.

Fiction Text Features vs Story Elements

Fiction text features often gets mixed up with story elements. Text features are parts of the text that don't include the main story, while story elements are all about the story in the book. The chart below shows some examples of each. For a more detailed caption of story elements and to read how nosotros taught them, read How to Teach Story Elements in Kindergarten.

Text Features Video

This is a great YouTube video you can evidence your students when introducing text features. It goes over many common features and can help your kids understand them.

Want to Learn More Almost Text Features?

Parts of a Volume

More from four Kinder Teachers

We'd honey to hear from you lot! Please leave us a comment below if you tried any of the activities from above or if yous have any questions. Thank You!

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