Once Upon a Fact

Helping Children Write Nonfiction

Carol Brennan Jenkins author Alice Altfillisch Earle author

Format:Paperback

Publisher:Teachers' College Press

Published:27th Jul '06

Should be back in stock very soon

Once Upon a Fact cover

This timely book explores the debate about how best to engage children in the writing of nonfiction and suggests many instructional strategies for K-6 classrooms. Using transcripts and descriptions of children's actual writing practices, the authors show that children willingly embrace nonfiction writing when the genre is given an important place in the classroom. Drawn from the authors' classroom-based research study with third graders, this groundbreaking volume: explores in detail the intertextual patterns that children adopt when writing nonfiction reports; documents the ways in which peer and teacher influence fuel and direct children's writing; identifies four types of nonfiction writers - strategic, experience-only, memory-only, and textbound - and presents case studies with excerpts from interviews and nonfiction reports; and offers a set of instructional guidelines for supporting and extending expository writing, including sample lessons and curricular activities.

Once Upon a Fact is a rich book: a gift for writing theorists, literacy researchers, and classroom teachers alike. It is comprehensive in its scope, smart in its execution, critical in its stance, and unusually self-reflective. - George Kamberelis, State University of New York at Albany

ISBN: 9780807746813

Dimensions: 228mm x 159mm x 13mm

Weight: 280g

192 pages