Scott Foresman Reading Street

Science in Reading

Examine features of expository nonfiction.
Practice a test-taking strategy.
Compare and contrast across texts.

PREVIEW/USE TEXT FEATURES

As students preview "Fast Facts: Black Bears," have them look at the head above each paragraph and examine the map. Then ask:

What information does the map show? (It shows where black bears live.)
What are the main topics in the selection? (Where bears live, what their bodies are like, and what they eat)

Link to Science

Discuss what a fast fact is, and have students organize the information about bears in a three-column chart.

Access Content Preview the selection with students by reading each head aloud and explaining the idioms. For example, Trees Are a Breeze means trees are easy to climb, Working Out refers to exercising, and Chow Time means it's time to eat.

Partner Reading, 39a

Writing

Grammar

Fluency

Declarative and Interrogative Sentences, 39f

Review Word List, 39j

Draft and Revise, 39h

Spelling

Fluency and Language Arts

EXPOSITORY NONFICTION

Use the sidebar on p. 36 to guide discussion.

Explain that the purpose of expository nonfiction is to inform readers.
Some pieces of expository nonfiction, such as this selection, contain heads describing the content of each section.
Have students look at the heads and discuss how they can help readers understand nonfiction selections better. Point out how students can use heads before they read to predict the topics the selection will cover. They can use them after reading to recall or summarize what they've read.

AudioText

Possible response: No, sequence is not always important. In "Fast Facts: Black Bears," you don't have to read the paragraphs in sequence to understand the information.

Like other bears, black bears
can stand upright as humans do.
They may stand to see over tall
grass or to sniff an odor in the
breeze. Or they may stand to
get to food that's hard to reach.

Black bears have sharp claws
that grow up to 2.5 inches (6.25
cm) long. The bears use their
claws to climb, tear apart prey,
dig for food, and make dens.

Long, Sharp Claws

Adult black bears are
good at climbing trees. They
usually go up to get food
such as acorns
or cherries.

Trees Are a Breeze

Take a Stand

Body Length: 4–6 feet (1.2–1.8 m)
Weight: 100–900 pounds (45–400 kg)
Life Span: About 30 years
Habitat: Woods, meadows, and
swamps
Range: See orange areas on map.

Expository
Nonfiction

Choose a favorite animal
to research. Use the library
or the Internet to find a
complete description of that
animal—where it lives, what
it looks like, what it eats.
Make a “Fast Facts” poster
about your animal.

Link to Science

A head above each
paragraph tells you
what the paragraph
will be about.
The map is important
because it gives visual
information to go along
with the text.

Text Features

Expository nonfiction
provides information
about people, places,
animals, and other things
in the real world.
Expository nonfiction
may give a few facts or it
may describe a subject in
depth with many facts.

Genre

There are more black bears
in the world than any other
kind of bear. Most of them live
in forests and other wild places. That's why most people never see them. The people who
first called these bears "black" lived in eastern North America, where the bears are black.

Where Are They?

by Kathy Kranking

Sequence

Is sequence always important in what you read?

den	place where a wild animal lives; lair
keen	strong; vivid
prey	animals hunted and killed for food by another animal

Bears in the Southeast

Black bears can be found in the mountains and
coastal plains of the Southeast. There, as elsewhere
in the United States, people continue to move into areas
once inhabited by wildlife, leaving less wild land on which the
animals find food and shelter. Black bears generally are not a great
threat to humans, but people and bears are encountering each other
more and more. Reports of "nuisance" bears have greatly increased.
In Florida: calls escalated from less than 100 in 1990 to 1,563 calls
in 2004. Fortunately, only one fatal black bear attack has ever occurred in the southeastern United States.