Finding the Heart of Nonfiction: Teaching 7 Essential Craft Tools with Mentor Texts

Georgia Heard almost invariably hooks me as soon as I start to read anything she's written. It helps, I suppose, that she's a poet. I'm a sucker for poetry. Besides that, this book should help teachers, in particular, find successful ways of presenting non-fiction to their students. The volume includes recommendations of appealing non-fiction books for a variety of age levels and in both science and social science/social studies. Heard's own writing is lucid, heartfelt, and convincing. Focusing more on non-fiction is important these days, of course, because of Common Core. More than that, however, non-fiction matters because it's what most of us spend most of our lives having to live and needing to understand.

I had the opportunity to attend a conference with Georgia Heard. She is fabulous and so is this book. It's an easy read and very beneficial. I read through it in about three hours and was using information from the book in my classroom the next day. Finding nonfiction books for primary students doesn't mean that the books have to be boring or written poorly! Georgia's book has helped me breathe life back into my teaching of nonfiction writing using inspiring mentor texts.

Great book with handy tips on how to approach nonfiction from a fresh perspective using mentor texts, and how to develop instruction around them. Suitable for middle school which is the age group I am teaching (Grade 6 in particular). There are also many examples from Elementary School.

This book definitely met my expectations and then some. It got right to the point of teaching with nonfiction. It has an easy to read, easy to follow text. It includes specific examples using cited nonfiction books that are readily available and includes appropriate worksheets to use with student outcome examples. I recommend this book to any K-5 teacher and to any elementary level school teacher librarian.

I absolutely loved this book and got so much out of it. I received training in the Literacy Collaborative framework as a public school teacher and this book goes hand-in-hand with that philosophy. Now I am homeschooling and I bought this book to help me teach the informational genre from an inquiry stance. I can't say enough good things about it.

Fantastic text for teachers looking to use more mentor texts in the classroom. This book wad was recommended to me by teachers at the writing project summer institute I attended this year.Maybe of us got it and enjoyed discussing ask the potential. Great read!

Great mini-lesson ideas that can easily be added to any writing unit. I used two of the ideas in the chapter on details with my third graders opinion writing, and it was extremely helpful in improving their pieces.

Georgia Heard lays out a plan to help students write engaging nonfiction pieces. Her recommended mentor texts are a gift no middle school teacher should be without. This book is slated for discussion at our teacher book club.