Chatterbooks Activity Pack Wonderful Non Fiction!

Chatterbooks Activity Pack Wonderful Non-Fiction!

Reading and activity ideas for your Chatterbooks group

Wonderful Non-Fiction!

This Chatterbooks activity pack gives you a treasure chest of wonderful non-fiction titles from our Children's Reading Partners publisher partners, plus lots of ideas for activities and discussion with your Chatterbooks groups. Enjoy these bright and vibrant books, full of fascinating information ? and celebrate this year's National Non-Fiction November!

This pack is brought to you by The Reading Agency and their publisher partnership Children's Reading Partners. Chatterbooks is a reading group programme for children aged 4 to 14 years. It is coordinated by The Reading Agency and its patron is author Dame Jacqueline Wilson. Chatterbooks groups run in libraries and schools, supporting and inspiring children's literacy development by encouraging them to have a really good time reading and talking about books. The Reading Agency is an independent charity working to inspire more people to read more through programmes for adults, young people and Children ? including the Summer Reading Challenge, and Chatterbooks. See .uk Children's Reading Partners is a national partnership of children's publishers and libraries working together to bring reading promotions and author events to as many children and young people as possible.

Contents 3 Wonderful Non-Fiction! Ideas for discussion and activities ? Warm up 5 Things to talk about 6 Longer activity: Be a presenter! 7 Dewey Decimal Code 8 Wonderful Non-Fiction! The books ? with activities linked to these books 21 More reading suggestions

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Wonderful Non-Fiction! Ideas for discussion and activities

Get together a collection of favourite non-fiction titles - a mix of subjects and formats. And have sheets of flip-chart paper for collecting people's ideas and answers in discussions.

Warm ups

Wonderful Non-Fiction! Wordsearch Here are some non-fiction topics ? look for them in the squares: across, down, up, and from right to left. Then talk together about them ? what sort of information would you find in each topic? Which do you most like reading about?

SPORT NATURE SCIENCE

BIOGRAPHY

DINOSAURS

TREES

ENCYCLOPAEDIA

HISTORY GEOGRAPHY ANIMALS COMPUTERS HUMAN BODY

T R E E S Z X S R E T U P MO C Y PVX V N Q BCX AS F ZVQ E C N E I C S Q WP B Z J X K H B M A B X Y Q X J X Z V G WX I S F T D WC F Z P F Q J F BG S WX UX K L X P F V Z XV XJ T P J R Q WO J F P G Q F J KP O X F E Q X P Z P J E WZ V F M R S X PK J A X BI O GRA PHY P QS V F E G X J G P X J BG X O WL V X D Z V Q R X U F Z K Q

R V AZ D I N OS A URS GJ W T P MV X A J Z Q P X P Q X G Z J E I K Q Z F J G H S Z WJ V P Z Q N WF X Q P J Y X P J QZ F X F A Q X Z J Y D O B N A MU H

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Wonderful Non-Fiction! Amazing Facts! Have fun with these fascinating facts! Which are true and which are false? Divide your group into two teams. Read aloud these `facts' and with each fact ask people to call out whether they think it is true or false. Keep note of each team's answers. At the end read out which is true or false ? the winning team is the one which has identified the most facts correctly as true or false. Talk some more about the amazingly true ones! Variations

Give each team a printed sheet with the list of facts and ask them to discuss and decide about each fact, marking it T or F. Then go through the answers together to find the winning team.

Get teams to create their own Amazing Facts list with a mix of true and invented facts ? and then challenge each other!

FACT

1. The Great Fire of London was started by a Christmas pudding 2. Maggots breathe through their bottoms 3. William Shakespeare invented over 1700 new words 4. The Romans invented underfloor central heating 5. A banana kick is a goal scored by a player in yellow boots 6. A megabyte is the name for a triple-decker sandwich 7. Owls have three eye-lids 8. A footballer earning ?1 million a week makes 1.6p a second 9. Your ears will keep on growing right through your life 10. Sound travels fastest through air 11. Of all the people in the world 9% have brown hair 12. Snakes have slimy, scaly skin 13. There are 53 Lego bricks made for each person on earth 14. The longest an average adult human can last without eating is

25 days 15. Bats have powerful eye-sight and can see things a mile away 16. Dwarf elephants, about a metre high, once roamed islands in

the Mediterranean 17. The average person walks the equivalent of all the way round

the world in a lifetime 18. You share your birthday with at least 9 million other people in

the world 19. If a crab's leg gets broken off, it can grow a new one. 20. The average 4 year old child asks over 400 questions a day!

TRUE or FALSE?

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Things to talk about

What is non-fiction? Talk about non-fiction ? facts, information etc - and the difference between fiction and non-fiction.

How do you like to get your information? Have a look at a collection of different kinds of non-fiction books ? there are many formats to choose from! Talk about which books people like best when reading about their favourite topics, or when finding out facts and information for homework. Formats include

Picture books Lots of text Lots of pictures Photos and/or illustrations Cartoons and comic strips Books with a 2-page spread for each aspect of the book's subject Lots of information snippets, highlighted or framed in boxes Devices such as: `Did you know?' `True or False' `Fascinating Facts' Quizzes Charts and diagrams Information told through stories What else?!

Writing and publishing a non-fiction book If you were writing a non-fiction book, what are all the things you need to think about to make a really good book? Talk about and list all the things needed to get a book written and published. Who does each of these things? ? e.g author, illustrator, publisher Here are some starters for your list:

Getting a good idea for a subject which people will want to read about Who will be the readers/audience for the book? Researching and finding out all about the subject Deciding how to present the information about this subject ? e.g. lots of text;

snappy text; any pictures; what kind of pictures Writing the text! Making sure the text and pictures are accurate ? and will suit your audience Have a look at `How a picture book is made' ? an enjoyable film (5 mins) which gives good pointers for what happens in the making of a book.

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