Chapter 7: Realistic Fiction

Realistic fiction books are wrote with settings, characters, and events.  These books can be depicted by ones events in life but are made up.  Realistic fiction holds the attention of many children making it easier to expand their knowledge.  Teachers can use this genre in read alouds, journals, and open ended discussions.  Using realistic fiction in your classroom has many benefits.  It allows students to see the world from others perspectives, children get to use writing to show human problems and relationships with honesty in a depth they never have before. 

I cannot wait to use realistic fiction in my classroom.  I have so many great ideas of how I would incorporate creating new knowledge with fun activities.  In the beginning of the year I will allow each of my students to write down a few books that they enjoy reading.  I will make sure my library holds a majority of those books.  During the year we will have read alouds of these different books.  Once we get into the lesson more I will have the students work in groups to create and illustrate a realistic fiction story.  Children love to work in groups and creating for a final product is always fun.  We will share our stories with others. 

I did something similar to this with 6 ESE kindergarten students and they loved it.  They decided what they wanted to be when they grew up.  We made play-do people, illustrated, wrote about what they would do when they got older, and took realistic pictures.  At the end of the lesson we put together their books and they shared them with each other and then brought them home to their parents.  In my classroom, I would want to keep these books in my library to show classes to come.