Comparing Fiction and Non Fiction

We have been studying fiction and non-fiction stories the past couple weeks. We have discussed how to write summaries for each and how they differ.  We then looked at how characters in a story can differ.

We read "Red Writing Hood" in our basal readers and the boys about had a heart attack when they were asked to play a girls part! It was hilarious (for a second) and then annoying (the 10 minutes after).

Then we read Wolf! by Becky Bloom to see a different fictional wolf that wanted to learn to read.  

We then read Wild, Wild Wolves and a Coyote & Wolves book both non-fiction.  

We discussed the characteristics of the wolves described.  We talked about how they looked and what they did.  This was very hard for my class to separate. One is real and one isn't..... that is all you need to know in their minds.  

I then asked them to illustrate and explain what we just talked about and the task grew impossible.  I eventually got some great work from them.  Sometimes kids just over think things.  They thought they had to come up with new information rather than using what we had just talked about.  Here are some samples of the students work.  I was quite pleased.

Well, tomorrow I will only have half of my class as the other half will be out at Elementary Track Meet. I assume they do track meets in the morning here to avoid the heat, but it is difficult to do anything at school when half of the class is missing!  I guess we will just have to have fun without them!