Beth Anderson, Children's Writer

Though much of the fascinating information I glean from research never makes it into the story, some of it earns a place in back matter if it has the potential to engage and benefit educators, librarians, parents, and, most of all, young readers. Images and graphics are always a favorite!

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Part 2: Images and Graphics

Part 1 shared some of the back matter opportunities for kids to use critical thinking as they engage in learning objectives. Back matter text invites readers to connect to authors, illustrators, and characters, as well as connect past to present, their lives, and other texts. If you missed part 1, click HERE to explore opportunities for connections and some examples found in my books.

In Part 2, we’ll look at images and graphics in back matter. While these are especially engaging for visual learners and are more accessible than text for struggling readers, they tend to be irresistibly fascinating for everyone. They also support graphic literacy as students experience ways to organize and present information.

Photographs:

Photographs are great to use as discussion or writing prompts.

They’re perfect for practicing main idea and details.

Photographs are unintimidating and accessible primary sources that bring context and invite deeper understanding through visuals. Here’s a worksheet from the National Archives for students to analyze an image. https://www.archives.gov/education/lessons/worksheets/analyze-a-photograph-novice (Additional primary source worksheets are available for maps, artifacts, and more.) 

In addition to photographs of people, images of artifacts and objects widen understanding of story elements: character, conflict, and setting as students use critical thinking to draw conclusions, make inferences, and ask questions.

Graphics

Maps, charts, diagrams, schedules, and more expand understanding and provide experiences using varied information formats that also support functional literacy.      

Graphics also cross curricular areas and may connect language arts skills to social studies, science, and math content and objectives. In some books, endpapers also serve as a source of information.

Timelines:

Timelines are a common back matter feature that lend themselves to working with sequence and cause and effect relationships.

Fact vs Opinion: Discuss a fact on the timeline and share opinions about the importance or impact of that event or action.

Evaluate and choose the most important date, event, or action. Explain your choice using textual evidence or real world knowledge. 

Connect across texts with bios of people who participated in the same events or who lived during the same time period to widen understanding of people, events, and places.

The large range of IMAGES AND GRAPHICS found in back matter invite many more classroom activities that can address language arts skills as well as content areas.

Stay tuned for Part 3: Research and More! – next week!

Don’t forget to leave a comment below to be entered for winner’s choice of my titles. ALSO let me know if you share on social media or with teachers for extra entries. AND if you ARE an educator, please note that for 5 extra entries! (US addresses only, please. 3 winners – one drawn from each post in the series – announced 8/22/25)