The downloadable PDF resources in Go Facts Readers Level 1 are good models for student's own emergent nonfiction writing. Using them, teachers can provide opportunities for students to write simple texts on familiar topics. By actively linking students’ reading and writing activities, young readers are supported in their attempts to learn the structures and conventions of nonfiction writing. 

Go Facts integrates science and society and environment with reading and writing. The resources are ideal for use in the literacy program, or during a thematic unit about one of the topics in the series.

There are three strands to the Go Facts series — Science and Technology, My World (Society and Environment) and a mixture of the two, the Animal World. Each strand begins with the child’s directly experienced world and then moves out gradually to the wider world, as you move up the reading levels. Level 1 is the first of five levels of carefully graded readers.

Reading the Nonfiction Text

The reading lessons in this guide are suitable for small groups and fit easily into the guided reading component of the reading block. The lessons teach effective reading strategies for processing nonfiction texts.

Using the Writing Nonfiction Lesson Notes

By following each reading lesson with a lesson in writing nonfiction, students learn to use the structures modelled in the Go Facts resources in their own writing. By the end of the series students will have worked on a variety of purposeful writing activities.

Assessment

Suggestions for informal assessment appear throughout the reading and writing lessons. Blackline Master 13 on page 32 provides a rubric for assessment, as well as a merit certificate. Teachers can print a page per student and record each student's progress in reading and writing nonfiction texts.