Blog #9- Fiction vs. Nonfiction

Fiction Vs. Nonfiction for the ELL learner

                 

           

          In October, I read the following two books to my students about bats.  Both books proved to be highly engaging to the students, and they appeared to learn interesting facts about bats from the chosen books. Listed below are brief descriptions of each book and both the supporting and challenging features both genres possessed when focusing on an ELL learner.

Stellaluna-

    After an owl attacks her mother, a little baby bat named Stellaluna is abandoned.  Fortunately, Stellaluna finds safety in the nest of some baby birds and a caring mother. Even though the mother bird accepts Stellaluna as one of her own, she makes it very clear that Stellaluna can NOT act like a bat if she wants to stay in the nest. So, instead of doing things that bats are supposed to do, such as hang by their feet, hunt at night, and eat fruit, Stellaluna behaves like a bird so that she can be part of the bird family.  Eventually, she teaches the other birds what a bat’s life is like, and they learn to appreciate and accept each other’s differences in the end.

Supporting Features-

-    Vivid, colorful, and engaging pictures

-    Story elements are present and easy to understand. (ex., setting, characters, problem, events, and solution)

-    Pictures and illustrations support the events in the story.

Challenging Features-

-    Illustrations of the bats are not entirely realistic. (almost “comic-like”)

-    The problem in the story, of a bat acting like a bird, is not realistic. This could not happen in the real world.

-    The events at the beginning of the story are not linked to real life animal behavior. In the real world, bats and birds are not “friends”.

-    The animals in the book talk, and this is not how animals communicate realistically.

Zipping, Zapping, Zooming, BATS-

       This book focused on fun and interesting facts about bats. The author explains these facts in ways that young readers can easily comprehend the material. For example, one of the facts in the book states that, "Each night a bat chomps half its own weight in bugs. If you weigh 60 pounds, that's like eating 125 peanut butter and jelly sandwiches every day."  

Supporting Features:

-    Some of the colorful photographs foster the comprehension of the vocabulary presented in the book.

-     Nonfiction features (ex., Table of Contents, Sub Headings, Glossary, captions, graphs, etc.)  support comprehension of the material.

Challenging Features:

-Vocabulary in the book is challenging and does not have visuals to go with every word.

- Not all of the text in the book is “user friendly” to an ELL learner.

- Some of the photographs do not include a caption for explanation. 

    All in all, I found that both of these books were effective in learning interesting facts about bats. They each brought something new to the table, prompted purposeful discussions, and engaged the students in a different way!