5 Reasons Nonfiction Books Are Important for Young Learners – Teaching Strategies

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When imagining an early childhood classroom, people often imagine children immersed in imaginary play scenarios enacting an imaginary adventure or celebrating an imaginary birthday. the theme of imagination is often reflected in the types of books offered to young children, with picture books and fictional stories often filling children’s shelves. however, research has shown that young children often prefer nonfiction to fiction.* This may be because children are still learning about the world around them and the facts and stories about topics! from real life are new and exciting!

Sharing non-fiction books helps children connect with the world around them and allows you to support children’s development and learning in five important ways:

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1. encourage critical thinking and information gathering skills. young children are often full of questions: “what do dolphins eat?” “why are the leaves brown?” “why do we sleep at night?” your first response to a child’s question may simply be to give him the answer; however, a powerful way to support children’s critical thinking skills is to refer them to a nonfiction book and find the answer together. you might say, “hmm, that’s a great question. Let’s find a book about dolphins to see if we can learn what they eat.” Using this strategy not only helps children find answers to questions that make them curious, but also teaches them valuable searching and research skills.
2. build vocabulary and language skills. When children are exposed to books from different genres, they hear the caring adults in their lives share stories and have the opportunity to explore books, they hear and begin to understand new language, and they practice sharing their thoughts, ideas, and feelings . Nonfiction books are particularly helpful for building children’s vocabulary and language skills because they often introduce new words with pictures to support their meaning and include features like a glossary to give children a clear definition of new words.
3. make real-world connections. Because nonfiction books share real-life facts or events, they are great tools for making real-world connections to tap into children’s personal knowledge and experiences. This also means that you can use non-fiction books to further enhance children’s experiences and interests. For example, if a child went on a nature walk with his family over the weekend, he might be especially interested in books about trees and leaves, or if a child has a new pet guinea pig, he might become interested in books about caring for pets.
4. understand increasingly complex texts. Many picture books tend to follow a similar format: text supported by illustrations on the page. This simple, repetitive format helps children predict the flow of the book and creates an enjoyable read-aloud experience. The format of nonfiction books, however, often varies, sometimes including features such as a table of contents, text divided into different sections with headings, and a glossary of important words. Since nonfiction books are often more complex texts, children can interact with them in different ways. with support, they can refer to the table of contents and choose a section to read or look in the glossary to learn what a new word means.
5. support investigations related to the study the Creative Curriculum for Preschool and Creative Curriculum for Kindergarten offer a wide variety of study topics for children to investigate, finding answers to their questions on the subject. The Creative Curriculum also includes a series of rich nonfiction texts for each topic of study that children can use to research interesting facts, see real pictures, and learn new vocabulary as they research. These age-appropriate texts are meaningful resources for children to review as they learn more and have new curiosities throughout a study. Our children’s digital library, available through the creative curriculum cloud and through the myteachingstrategies family mobile app, includes these nonfiction titles and gives you an easy way to share them with families.