Fiction vs. Nonfiction Books: What’s the Difference?

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

• Fiction books are imaginary stories that have been written by an author to entertain a reader.
• Nonfiction 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 nonfiction 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. nonfiction books in an informative and appealing way.

The slide deck addresses the following content:

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

Are you wanting to check that your students are grasping the differences between fiction and nonfiction? 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 nonfiction

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

Explore Fiction and Nonfiction Text Features with your Students

This slide deck makes an excellent starting point when it comes to teaching your littlest learners about fiction and nonfiction 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 summarized version of this slide deck to display in your classroom? Click on the link below to access our Fiction vs. Nonfiction Posters!

Download This Fiction Vs. Nonfiction Slide Deck

Use the dropdown menu next to the Download button to access the 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 ELA lesson!

Kendall Britnell, a teacher in Colorado and 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 nonfiction text features? Good news… we have many more teacher-created, curriculum-aligned resources available!

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