Sarah & Nonfiction

Reading nonfiction as a student was like pulling teeth for me. Fiction let me use my imagination to create movies in mind about what I was reading, and I liked working through rhythmic language.  Nonfiction reading just seemed really boring to me. Unless I was very invested or interested in the topic, it was a real struggle.  When I was in second or third grade, I wrote about Olympic runner Wilma Rudolph, and I can remember using library books and encyclopedias to do research about her. I did the same in sixth grade when I had an assignment on a deep sea creature, the cuttlefish.  In ninth I wrote my first real research paper about Army Ranger and NFL player Pat Tillman based on the nonfiction reading I did on the Internet.  I was really interested in these topics, so much so that I can still recall information about Wilma Rudolph twenty years later.  This made the reading interesting and engaging to me.  It didn't hurt that a lot of these nonfiction texts had pictures and captions I could interpret.  As I got older, nonfiction reading let me access a wide variety of topics I'm interested in, but the engagement piece was imperative.  Depending on text complexity, accessible text features like images or charts were necessary for my understanding, too. 

As an adult, I continue to struggle with nonfiction, because I still have to be deeply engaged with it.  I always look for significant images, charts, and captions within the text.  With the increase in access to this information, I'm learning not only more deeply about previous interests, but new interests, like MoMA artists.  Additionally, I'm reading a lot of news--both local and national.  This increase in access to news sources is sharpening my critical thinking skills, mulling through all the "fake news", "alternative facts", and "click bait" that are out there.  This validates how necessary that skill is for our students!