Fun Nonfiction Reading Activities

In my old reading series there was a theme called Disasters.  It included the stories:  Titanic...Lost and Found, Pompeii...Buried Alive, and Patrick and the Great Molasses Explosion.  I LOVED this theme.  It was a fantastic way to teach nonfiction to third graders. 

My third grade buddy and I decided when we got our new reading series, that we don't like, that we could not give this theme up.  So what did we do???  I went on Amazon and bought 15 copies of the old reading book.  This way we can use it in our classroom.

 

This is the old reader.  It is by Houghton Mifflin.  Our new series is by Harcourt Trophies.

We are doing this theme right now.  We taught disasters in our science curriculum before Spring Break along with Magic Tree House Disaster books.  Now we are using the old reader to continue on.

We started with Pompeii...Buried Alive.  My students were mesmerized with this story.  They couldn't believe that people didn't know that the volcano was a sleeping giant.  We had so many great class discussions with this story.

We made posters showing Pompeii before, during, and after Mt. Vesuvius blew up.  We made travel brochures showing tourists what they can see in Pompeii now.  We made mosaics, just like the story showed us, using paper squares.  We had so much fun that they didn't know they became experts on the town of Pompeii (all while learning about nonfiction!!!)!!!

Here are some pictures of some of the activities we did this week:

A travel brochure for people to come to Pompeii to visit the museums.

A travel brochure opened up.

 

A paper mosaic of two whales in the ocean.

 

A paper mosaic of a cat.

 

A paper mosaic a student called "The Light".

The next story is Titanic...Lost and Found. 

The kiddos can't wait.  And they are super excited that we are reading it the week of the actual sinking of the Titanic.  So now you know why I couldn't give this theme up!  I use this old reading book later in the school year when I teach fractured fairy tales!  :)