​Nonfiction in the ELA Classroom

This project was developed as a response to a comment that I often heard from teachers at the middle school where I worked as a substitute. Many Language Arts teachers would report how difficult the Common Core State Standards were to implement, and how they felt that many of their students are struggling under these standards. One of the most-cited problems that I heard was, "Our students don't know how to read nonfiction. It's like pulling teeth--they hate it, and we hate to make them do it."

 

As I dug deeper, I found that these teachers were voicing an opinion that revealed a much larger underlying issue.