“My goal is to offer perspective, and ideas to incorporate in primary classrooms to more fully open the doors of the wide, delightful world of nonfiction literacy.”
-Christine Duthie
As a committed user of children's literature in the classroom, Chris Duthie worked on incorporating more of the expanding body of nonfiction in her teaching, and some questions began to form in her mind:
- Are we spending a sufficient amount of our language arts time on nonfiction?
- Are young learners too unfamiliar with the unique aspects of the genre to find it interesting or pleasurable?
- Are we to assume that young children cannot be motivated to read nonfiction?
Chris decided to use more nonfiction in her first-grade classroom and soon realized that simply making the books available and reading them aloud was not enough. She discovered ways to make nonfiction an integral part of her classroom so that it became an equal partner with fiction in both reading and writing workshop. And she learned that “We don't have to trick children or force them to become enthusiastic about nonfiction. Positive attitudes, habits, and environments can transform children's experience of nonfiction into an exhilarating journey of discovery.”
In True Stories she describes how she drew on children's real-life experiences and existing knowledge to nurture that sense of wonder through:
- Nonfiction author studies.
- Nonfiction in reading and writing workshop.
- Reading nonfiction Big Books.
- A close concentration on the visual elements of texts.
- Reading and writing biography and autobiography.
Because Chris Duthie writes out of her own classroom experience, True Stories is a dependable source of ideas and proven methods for all teachers.
Christine Duthie has spent most of her twenty-year professional career in the primary classroom. She is currently a first-grade teacher at Trumansburg Elementary School (NY).
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