Do you ever find yourself asking: How do I make sense out of all of these terms? Nonfiction Expository Texts Informational Texts Nonfiction Narrative

CCSSCCSS defines informational texts as literary nonfiction and historical, scientific, and technical texts that include “biographies and autobiographies; books about history, social studies, science, and the arts; technical texts, including directions, forms, and information displayed in graphs, charts, or maps; and digital sources on a range of topics”.

Nonfiction is NOT a genre Genres are forms of texts that have different purposes, characteristics and text features to accomplish those purposes. Nonfiction texts are any texts that present true information. There are many genres within nonfiction.

Informational Texts Narrative Nonfiction (Auto)Biographies Persuasive Informative/Explanatory Procedural Duke, N. K. (2014). Inside Information: Developing Powerful Readers and Writers of Informational Text Through Project-Based Instruction. New York: Scholastic.

The following slides present a brief description of the purposes and examples of the five types of informational texts as defined by Nell Duke in her book Inside Information (2014).

Narrative Nonfiction Narrative Nonfiction is a genre that is usually sequentially ordered and tells the true story of a specific period of time.

(Auto)Biographies Typically organized chronologically and shares the experiences of an individual

Persuasive Texts The purpose of persuasive texts are to influence or persuade the readers’ thinking or move them to action non-fiction.html

Informative/Explanatory Informative/Explanatory texts tell about how our natural and social worlds work. Typically talk about a general class of things in a timeless way (Duke & Bennett-Armistead, 2003).

Procedural Texts Typically provides step-by-step directions on how to do accomplish a task.

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