5 Nonfiction Series to Use in Your Elementary Classroom

Thanks again to Minute Mommy for hosting this weekly blog hop. For this week, we're diving into nonfiction books, a very under-appreciated genre for some kids. I personally love using non-fiction books with students. I'm a reading specialist so I work with kids kindergarten to sixth grade. I like to start early with them using nonfiction. I see so many times that when kids have comprehension issues, it is almost always when nonfiction is involved. Again, it's best to start as early as possible modeling comprehension strategies while reading nonfiction books.

Very often nonfiction books come in series of topics. I have a lot of series that are favorites, so I decided to go that route with my list of books. So without further ado... here are my must have nonfiction series.

I Survived series by Lauren Tarshis

So these books may be a little bit of cheating when it comes to "nonfiction". The idea behind the books is that Lauren uses real events that have happened and includes some true facts about the event, but then also throws in a fictional element with some of the characters and events. I personally love this series, because I think it's a nice middle ground for students who are bored by nonfiction. They're learning some facts about a real event in history, while also being entertained by a fictional story. I think it's a win-win.

Also, check out Lauren's website. There are tons of activities and other info to look at while reading the books. I've used both of these books shown with students that I tutor (students who are not super interested in reading) and they LOVED them. In fact, they both saw that it was a series and wanted to read the others. Again, WIN!!!

If You Lived Series by various authors

I love this series of historical books. So far, I'm aware of there being 12 available. Check out this link to see them all.
The best thing about them is the format in which they are written, which is question and answer. I find this helpful because students can pick and choose parts of the book to read. They can skim to questions that they find interesting.

Also, they're great to use with the KWL (What I Know, What I Want to Know, and What I Learned) strategy. I'll have the students list what they know about the topic before we read, brainstorm a few questions they have about the topic, or pick out a certain number of questions in the table of contents that they would like to learn more on, and then after reading, they answer the questions in a short summary telling what they learned from the book.

Other topics covered include:

If You Lived 100 Years Ago
If You Lived During the San Francisco Earthquakes
If You Lived in Colonial Williamsburg
If You Lived in Colonial Times
If You Lived When There Was Slavery in America
If You Lived With the Cherokee Indians
If You Lived With the Iroquois Indians
If You Lived With the Sioux Indians
If You Sailed on the Mayflower
If You Traveled West in a Covered Wagon
If You Were at the First Thanksgiving

National Geographic Kids

These are awesome for even beginner readers because of the great illustrations and pictures that are used in the book. I've had many struggling readers who really latch onto this series because they often can use the pictures to look for clues when figuring out an unknown word. The series ranges from animals, science, people, and nature. Here's a website where you can have a student log in to keep track of the books they read.

Scholastic's True or False Series

I find that with most nonfiction books, for most kids, if it has something to do with animals- you're good to go. In this series there are a lot of books that have to do with just that... especially this one! I've had kids get into a fight over who was going to get to read it next! I mean come on, look at those babies on the cover!!!

It's written in a question and answer format. The reader has to decide whether or not it's true or false. The pictures are great as well. These are really good for students in fourth or fifth grade who really struggle with reading.

Magic Treehouse Nonfiction Companions

I love that Magic Treehouse has companion books to go along with their fictional stories (like the two above). It reminds me in a way of the I Survived series. I have found that kids love these books, because they can can be related back to a fictional story that they have already read or could read after the nonfiction. (I prefer doing the nonfiction one first, so that they can have prior knowledge for some things they will come across in the fictional story.)

This is also a great way to talk about compare and contrast between fiction and nonfiction, such as text structures and so on.

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