If you are using a First or Second Grade Literacy Footprints Kit, then you may have noticed that at a certain point, the level drops for nonfiction texts. This is one way Literacy Footprints lessons are designed to support readers as they gain more skills.
Informational text provides different challenges from fiction. Often there are unfamiliar concepts and different reading vocabulary in informational text. Early and Early/Transitional readers who are just beginning to build a processing system can be easily thrown by these different challenges. To better prepare students for a successful reading, we sometimes use a nonfiction book in our Literacy Footprints lesson sequence that's one level lower than the fiction books being taught. As students progress into higher text levels, their ability to read and understand informational text will become more closely aligned with the level they can read fiction and so this no longer becomes necessary.