4th Grade Nonfiction Text Features

Fourth graders at Davis Elementary have been learning about nonfiction text features (SOL4.6a) and drawing conclusions using textual information (SOL4.6f). So today students in Ms. White’s class created nonfiction websites using CheckThis. Since they have been studying clouds (Science SOL4.6) and Jamestown (VS.3), they made their websites about one of those topics. First we reviewed text features to include like bold type, headings, captions, and photographs. I also explained that their classmates would be using the information in their websites to draw conclusions, so they needed to be thinking of good questions to ask about their topics. Next, we went to CheckThis and created a website without signing in. Since students can’t create an account, we had to finish the website during the one hour lesson, which wasn’t a problem for this class. I showed them how to customize the colors and fonts of their page. Then the students typed their information, making important words bold. I was surprised at how much they were able to type in such a short time! They also added a photo and a poll. The polling feature is one of the reasons I prefer CheckThis to other webpage-creation services because it adds an interactive element to the students’ websites. Finally we published our sites, copied the links, and posted them to Google classroom with a good question for our classmates to answer in the comments. You can take a look at all their websites here.