Fiction vs Non-Fiction Books: What’s the Difference?

One of the earliest lessons we teach our smallest students when engaging with books is that fiction and non-fiction books are fundamentally different!

• Fiction books are imaginary stories that have been written by an author to entertain a reader.
• Non-fiction texts are factual texts based on real-life topics. Their purpose is to inform the reader.

This 23-slide teaching presentation has been created by our experienced teacher team to help you explain fiction text features and non-fiction text features to your students. It uses age-appropriate language and attractive visuals to teach your students what they need to know about fiction vs non-fiction books in an informative and appealing way.

The slide deck addresses the following content:

• What is fiction?
• Characters
• Setting
• Illustrations 
• Plot
• What is non-fiction?
• Headings and subheadings
• Photographs
• Captions
• Diagrams 
• Maps and charts

Are you wanting to check that your students are grasping the differences between fiction and non-fiction? We hear you! To help you do this, we’ve included multiple informal assessment options in the slide deck so you can see how well your students are absorbing the content presented. These include:

• Stop and jot
• Complete the sentences
• Choose the correct text: Fiction or non-fiction

Through engaging with this resource, your students will be able to identify the key text features that characterise fiction and nonfiction texts.

Explore Fiction and Non-Fiction Text Features with your Students

This slide deck makes an excellent starting point when it comes to teaching your littlest learners about fiction and non-fiction text features. As you work through the slide deck as a class, we encourage you to stop and discuss each feature in further detail. Provide your students with opportunities to share examples of each text feature from books they have read or shared. The more students talk about books and their features, the better!

Looking for a summarised version of this slide deck to display in your classroom? Click on the link below to access our Fiction vs Non-Fiction Posters!

Download This Fiction vs Nonfiction Slide Deck

Use the dropdown menu next to the Download button to select between the Microsoft PowerPoint or Google Slides version of this resource. (Note: You will be prompted to make a copy of the Google Slides presentation before accessing it.)

Project the resource onto your screen and work through the slides as a class for a paperless English lesson!

Kendall Britnell, a Teach Starter collaborator, contributed to this resource.

More Resources for Exploring Text Features

Looking for more resources to support your teaching of fiction and non-fiction text features? Good news… we have many more teacher-created, curriculum-aligned resources available!

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