Nonfiction's Influence on Report Writing
Contemporary informational books provide numerous examples of how information can be presented in an interesting, challenging, humorous, or beautiful fashion. Teachers who help children discover formats in informational writing help them avoid the stilted school writing that begins with "My report is on" and proceeds through copied encyclopedia phrases. Writers like Aliki and Gail Gibbons use a straightforward expository style that is lively and inviting. Their illustrations, with captions or labels, are simple but add to, and extend, the information contained in the words. Seymour Simon's Animal Fact/Animal Fable is organized as a guessing game. Statements about animals, such as "Porcupines shoot their quills," are followed on the next page with a related paragraph beginning something like "Fable: Porcupines cannot really shoot their quills." Diane DeGroat's illustrations vary from humorous, to close-up, to straightforward. The useful If series, such as If You Lived at the Time of the San Francisco Earthquake by Ellen Levine, is organized in question-and-answer format. Children can arrange some part of nearly any topical report into a true/false, question-and-answer, or guessing-game format.
            Children should be exposed to many examples of close-ups, labeled line-drawings, processes explained in box-and-arrow arrangements or time lines, and picture captions in such visually stunning books as the Eyewitness series titles Amazing Birds or Amazing Poisonous Animalsby Alexandra Parson. Peter Spier's Tin Lizzie and Bernd Heinrich's An Owl in the House: A Naturalist's Diary are two examples of treatment of a life cycle, the first of a car and the second of an owl. Children could recast studies of objects or animals in these formats.
            Photo essays are wonderful ways to capture children's progress through a project. In Insect Metamorphosis: From Egg to Adult Ron and Nancy Goor use clear prose and captioned pictures to portray the stages of insect development. Children who are creating a play from a folktale, making stuffed paper figures for a puppet show, or raising chicks in the classroom could develop a photo essay of the process and the finished product or end point as a way of remembering it.
            Teachers who encourage children to notice format and form in informational books and use it in their own reports do much to help children become literate. Understanding the conventions by which information is conveyed, whether it is through maps, timelines, charts, photographs, captions, surveys, or graphs, is a part of any literate person's skills.

Gibbons, Gail. Chicks & Chickens. Holiday House, 2003.
Goor, Ron, and Nancy Goor. Insect Metamorphosis: From Egg to Adult. Atheneum, 1990.
Heinrich, Bernd. An Owl in the House: A Naturalist's Diary. Adapted by Alice Calaprice. Joy Street, 1990.
Levine, Ellen. If You Lived at the Time of the Great San Francisco Earthquake. Illustrated by
Richard Williams. Scholastic, 1987.
Parson, Alexandra. Amazing Birds. Illustrated by Jerry Young. Knopf, 1990.
———. Amazing Poisonous Animals. Illustrated by Jerry Young. Knopf, 1990.
Simon, Seymour. Animal Fact/Animal Fable. Illustrated by Diane DeGroat. Crown, 1979.
Spier, Peter. Tin Lizzie. Doubleday, 1978.

Directions, Explanations, and Surveys
Many literature extensions have accompanying writing possibilities. Children who write directions for designing and printing from plastic foam trays need to write procedures concisely if others are going to understand the process. Writing directions for a literary game gives children an opportunity to write with clarity and precision. If others can play the game by following what the writer has written, then the directions have succeeded.
            Explanations and descriptions help others understand what children have created or accomplished. If students' work is displayed for a wider audience, as in school corridors, lunchrooms, or the library, then children understand the necessity for informative writing to speak clearly for them in their absence. In addition, displays provide a natural encouragement for children to revise and recopy, if necessary, for this public writing. Teachers can help children write longer and more complete descriptions by asking questions like these: How did you do this? What materials did you use? What part of the book is this based on? Why did you choose it? One such discussion produced the following from two second-grade boys:
                                    We made a diorama of Nantucket Harbor. We started with a cardboard box. Then we cut out some houses and then we made the whale and glued the whale on at an angle then we painted the whale black. We were going to make the under ground city but it was to hard to make. We had trouble on the whale we kept making the whale smaller. And we had trouble on the dock. And the sky and clouds because it was very hard. The windows on the houses were hard to. [sic] We painted the clouds 4 times.
            A group of first graders responded to The Biggest House in the World by Leo Lionni through a variety of media and math activities. They took surveys of children's preferences for the color, kind, and size of a house (one, two, or three stories). Their concept of the word house was enlarged to include the "houses" of a snail and a turtle (shells). A bulletin board displayed the results of these extensions from a single book.
            Literary surveys give children experiences with representing their findings in graphs. One group of 11- and 12-year-olds surveyed each other on such topics as "Which Judy Blume books have you read?" "How many books did you read in March?" and "Have you read any books from these series: Baby-Sitters Club, Nancy Drew, the Hardy Boys?" Data was presented in pie and bar graphs, averages, and percentiles in a variety of interesting displays.
            Other surveys have been made of how frequently and how long each teacher reads aloud to the class or where and when children like to read. Children doing survey research will learn much about conducting and organizing the results of a survey. In addition, a teacher learns more about the reading profile of the class from these surveys. Teachers can help children state questions clearly so that answers can be categorized and counted. Discussing ways of representing information, such as bar or circle graphs, keys and use of symbols, will help children create more visually interesting survey charts.

Nonfiction Magazines for Children
Children may also be introduced to the genre of nonfiction through magazines. Often magazines are visually appealing, address a variety of topics, and appear less daunting to reluctant readers. Reading an article in a magazine might inspire a child to a more in-depth exploration of a topic through nonfiction literature. There are several quality children's magazines that focus on nonfiction:

• Ranger Rick produced by he National Wildlife Federation explores the natural world. This magazine, targeting students ages 7-12, includes news about nature and wildlife around the world.
• National Geographic World is designed for students ages 9-14 and includes all the areas covered by its counterpart for adults, National Geographic.
• KIDS Discover focuses on high-interest topics and is designed for students ages 6-12.