An advocate for including informational text in the classroom, professor Nell Duke, in her article, “The Case for Informational Text,” promotes the idea that informational text and fiction text should be used and perceived equally in the classroom. Duke mentions that teachers should increase student access to and time with informational text within lessons taught.
The author suggests that we increase access to informational text for younger readers by including new components in the classroom, increasing home-school connections, and reading informational text aloud. She mentions that the classroom library should include more nonfiction text, and as a result, students will read more nonfiction text during their independent reading time.
I believe that these suggestions in order to include more informational text in the classroom are great and I am already thinking of many ideas of how to incorporate nonfiction in high school English as well as other content areas. I especially like the idea of reading aloud from nonfiction books because students will appreciate the variety of materials being shared and several reading activities can be applied as well, such as K-W-L.
Duke, Nell K. (2004). The Case for Informational Text. Educational Leadership. March 2004, 40-44.
