Blog 9: Fiction vs. Nonfiction

Fiction Non-Fiction

- Imaginary Events

-Characters are sometimes animimals

- Story line has characters, setting and plot - Real events

- Has a theme - Academic Language

- Entertaining - Discusses real topics and subjects

-Illustrations support the story line - Abstract thinking required

Written to sound like accurate spoken language - Usually has photos or graphs depicting important information

Examples: Short stories, and novels Examples: Text books or research studies

This Venn diagram (This blog site isn't allowing me to transfer the circle outline of the diagram. I am waiting to hear back from the blog tech support.) illustrates the differences between fiction and nonfiction reading materials. Being able to read and comprehend both fiction and nonfiction texts are important for all students, not only English Language Learners. Most children and new language learners start reading fiction because of its consistent themes and predictability language. Fiction is usually easier to read, is similar to normal speech patterns and contains illustrations that correspond to the text. Non-fiction texts expect the reader to engage in abstract thinking. Children are usually introduced to non-fiction in school where direct learning takes place. A great thing about non-fiction texts is that there are usually lots of graphs, pictures, photos, bold/italic words and vocabulary words that are specific to the topic giving more background knowledge to the reader.

Fiction:

- The Lion and the Mouse by Jerry Pinkney

- Frog and Toad Are Friends by Arnold Lobel

- The House in the Night by Susan Marie Swanson

- The Relatives Came by Cynthia Rylant

- Stone Soup by Marcia Brown

- Tuesday by David Wiesner

Non-Fiction:

- Fireworks, Picnics and Flags by James Cross Giblin and Ursula Arndt

- Bully For You, Teddy Roosevelt! By Jean Fritz

- Eleanor Roosevelt: A Life of Discovery by Russell Freedman

- Riding to Washington by Gwenyth Swain

- Tarra and Bella by Carol Buckley