Annotated Bibliography Genre 5: Magazines

Genre Study

      The book genre that I chose this week is that of magazines. I suppose magazines are one of the more difficult texts to put into an informational text set. There are many different types of magazines, and many play host to current events throughout the world to science and nature magazines that discuss they workings and business of animals. To determine if a magazine is usable for informational text it should be from a fairly reputable publishing company, and the information within should be based on factual evidence. Magazines can be a range of reading levels, with some being college level and others being for grade school children. Magazines tend to have many articles and information that can be useful for research like work. Magazines also have the benefit of having quite a number of pictures. This isn't always the case, but most magazines typically have a healthy amount of pictures, which is important for use in elementary classrooms in my opinion. I see no reason teachers the world over should not subscribe to a few magazines to have in their respective classrooms. They not only have quite a bit of great information, but they are often highly entertaining as well.

Selected Titles

1. Animal Tales

      No exact Lexile on this magazine, but Animal Tales would probably be in the 2nd to 5th grade range of reading. There are some sections that are far easier to read than others, though there is nothing that is incredibly dense. This is magazine is definitely not a serious one, as it is mainly working with fun animal stories that are true, but a little bit on the goofy side. There are a number of write ups on animals, and facts are presented on these as animals. There are a number of fun activities and even posters to hang up. There are numerous pictures, and they really make up the majority of the magazine. I could see segments of this being read aloud, but not the whole thing. This is really a magazine that should just be present for reading during downtime in class.

References:

Animal Tales- June, 2016-Volume 3, Issue 3

2. National Geographic Kids

      No exact Lexile level on this magazine could be found, but I would say that it sits somewhere between 3rd and 6th grade, though I think it could even be used a few grades higher. This magazine has a varying degree of difficulty laced throughout with some articles being lower level reading and some being higher. The magazine very much covers animal topics, but there are some environmental topics covered as well. I could see this magazine being used as a research tool for many grades because of the great information held within. The magazine could be read aloud in bits and pieces, but shouldn't be read as a whole. Lots of great pictures in these magazines, though they don't take up the whole magazine. The nice thing about this magazine is that it is fairly current with the events that it covers compared to Animal Tales.

References:

National Geographic Kids-June/July, 2016.