Responding to Reading: Double-Entry Journals* Freebie!

One interesting way to use reader's notebooks is a double-entry journal. In a double-entry journal, you have a two-column page. On the top of the left side is a quote that is directly lifted from the text. On the top right, respond to the line of text. Monitor your thinking and explain how you reacted to the quote.

To use double-entry journals with your kids, be sure to model, model, model. If you pause and open up your brain for your kids enough, they can start to think in the complex way you're modeling. Here's a little script you might use for a double-entry journal.

1. Choose a book you will honestly react to. I love anything by Eve Bunting, but I'm generally in tears by the end of the book, so maybe stick to Patricia Polacco.
2. Read a part of the book and stop after a line that meant something to you.
3. Say: "This line is very powerful. I think I'm going to stop and think about it."
4. Record the quote on the left side.
5. Model thinking aloud on the quote. You may use the following as starters:
- I am surprised/shocked/saddened/excited because...
- This makes me think of....
- This reminds me of another book I read where...
- I chose this quote because...
- Because of this, I think ___ will happen because...
- I wonder...

This is a double entry written by one of my fourth graders when we read Esperanza Rising.

  A few tips for double-entry journals: 1. Don't kill it. Any strategy, when overused, gets pretty boring pretty fast. Choose some great texts to use this strategy with, periodically; not every time kids read! 2. Read the responses! You'll be surprised how interesting they are, and how much they tell you about your kids. 3. Model, model, and then model some more. Children don't just pick up new strategies like this. We need to give them opportunities to try it out together. 4. Talk it out. If kids are having trouble getting started writing on their own, have them talk to a partner about their thinking, or make a class-wide dialogue entry together. 5. Use sentence starters to help kids (and yourself) think. A sample anchor chart is included on this post about monitoring comprehension!

    Try it out and let me know how it goes! And for more ideas, check out "Responding to Reading," a freebie on TPT!

Or my new Scaffolded Reading Responses for Fiction!

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Responding to Reading: Responding to Questions *Freebie!

One question teachers frequently ask is, "How can I monitor my students' understanding during a read aloud or shared reading?" Sometimes, it's enough just to see what kinds of thoughts students are having as they read. Sometimes, though, I need to see a specific response to a purpose question. After playing with a few ideas, I tried out this reader's notebook strategy for having students respond in a focused way to our read aloud or shared reading. The strategy is: question strips!

Before we read a section of text in class, I would read it myself and write a question or two that I thought might help students evaluate their thinking. I used question stems from our state assessment and other rigorous sources, in order to build students' familiarity to the questions' syntax.

I typed these questions up, and copied them until I had a series of them running down the page. I can usually fit 12 or so on one page. I printed them out (it often only took two sheets to get enough for each student in my class to have one) and then I cut them into strips.

After our shared reading or read aloud (in this case, Esperanza Rising was our shared reading, so everyone had a copy - great for citing evidence from the text), I handed out one question strip to each student. They took a glue stick and quickly zipped it across the page, and then stuck the strip on.
 

I modeled, modeled, modeled how to write a simple but complete response to the question. After modeling for oh, about forever, my students were able to write coherent and accurate responses to the questions. I wrote questions about characterization, inferences, and personal connections for students to respond to. It was great insight into my students' understanding!

  Check out these posts about other ways to use Reader's Notebooks to respond to reading! Monitoring comprehension Writing book letters Double-entry journals Writing about characters Responding to questions And for more ideas, check out "Responding to Reading," a freebie on TPT!

Or my new Scaffolded Reading Responses for Fiction!

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Responding to Reading: Writing about characters* Freebie!

  

For students to really understand fiction, they need to have a strong understanding of the characters. The characters' traits drive the conflicts and themes of the story! In our shared reading of Frindle, my students and I spent a lot of time writing about characters. 

We started with a simple purpose for marking with post-its: Find evidence about Nick Allen's character. You can use his words, actions, or things other characters say about him. As we read, we marked placed we noticed his character becoming clear with post-its and wrote a short reaction on each post-it. 

After we read, I had students gather their post-its and stick them into their reader's notebook under, "Evidence about Nick Allen."

Then we brainstormed words that could describe his personality.

I wanted students to make some sort of decision about Nick's character, so I asked them a question with controversy: "Is Nick Allen a troublemaker?" Depending on my students' perspective, they would have different ideas about this.  To help my students understand different types and roles of characters, I introduced the vocabulary: Protagonist and Antagonist. I wanted my students to notice character interactions and think about how the characters were working against each other because of their personalities.  I chose a good chapter to introduce this concept - the chapter where we meet Mrs. Granger, who is Nick's very strict fifth grade teacher. As we read, we gathered evidence about Mrs. Granger and then wrote a prediction about how these characters would interact. 

Here is one of my students' brief responses to this chapter. On the bottom of the page, you can see that we connected this shared reading lesson to independent reading. The students had the same purpose for reading as we introduced during our whole-group reading lesson: Gather evidence about your character to describe him or her. Predict future events based on what you know about the characters. This student wrote about Diary of a Wimpy Kid, his independent reading selection.

And this student wrote about her character, Stuart Little. 

Scaffolding students' reading responses by setting up a purpose for reading with a graphic organizer and then providing sentence starters is a great way to grow your readers and writers.  This simple organizer requires students to identify the evidence in the text that helps them understand the characters' relationship. Then they use the starters to write a short response.

A strong connection between your whole-group lessons and students' independent reading can help students be purposeful and thoughtful during their independent reading time, building strategies to support their reading comprehension. And for more ideas, check out "Responding to Reading," a freebie on TPT!

Or my new Scaffolded Reading Responses for Fiction!

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Responding to Reading: Writing Letters about Books* Freebie!

Book Letters are incredible. They are one of the best things I did in the classroom. Lovers of books love to talk about books. We love to share books we love with other book lovers, too. Book letters, which students wrote to me in their reader's notebooks, are a great way to get interactive with your readers and really figure out what's going on in their heads!

To model book letters (because we know you must model every single behavior and strategy you expect in your classroom!) I started by responding in letter form to a book we'd read together. This is a book letter I wrote to my class about The Bee Tree, back in 2008. Wow, right? It's amazing what you'll find once you start going through your files!

I shared a copy of the letter with each student and they stuck it into their reader's notebooks as a sample. They loved getting a letter from their teacher, even though they all got the same one!

After reading another book aloud, I modeled writing book letters in front of the students. You really have to slow down your thinking to do a good think aloud; examine your thoughts and explain how you know what to do, and where your ideas are coming from.

Creating a list of sentence starters is helpful, too. You can check out the anchor chart I used to do this here, on a previous post about monitoring your comprehension.

This is a cherished letter from one of my lovely students, who was reading Because of Winn-Dixie.

I tried to respond to the letters as often as possible. I'm not going to lie; it can be a challenge. But if it's important to you, you'll find the time! And for more ideas, check out "Responding to Reading," a freebie on TPT!

Or my new Scaffolded Reading Responses for Fiction!

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Responding to Reading: Monitoring Comprehension* Freebie!

I honestly don't know how to teach reading without a notebook. When we write about our reading, we process, we explain, we explore, and we think new things about the text we read. We can generate ideas for our own writing, and think of things we hadn't thought until they came pouring out of our pencils.

Share this with your students: share the value that writing about something brings; that you can think with a pencil better than with just your brain.

To support my readers in responding to literature, I had them make a reader's notebook on the first day of school. I believe that, if it's important, do it right away! So I did.

They decorated the covers with things that they enjoyed reading about.

Early in the year, I wanted to work with my students on monitoring their comprehension. In the upper grades, we often work with a whole crop of students who can decode like nobody's business. And then you say, "Tell me about what you read," and they give you blank stares. I've actually had a third grader glance at the pictures (after reading the whole story) and make a up a story just using the pictures.

Oh. My. Lord. That isn't reading. That's decoding. Decoding is not reading; they are not interchangeable.

So it was very clear to me that we had to start noticing our reading thoughts, and fast. I always start by reading a shocking book.

Yes, a very shocking book. One book I use to introduce this idea is It Doesn't Have to Be This Way: A Barrio Story.

It's a story about a boy who lives in the barrio, gets roped into being in a gang, and then almost loses his good friend to a gunshot.

Yes, shocking. Why? Why do I read this with my fourth graders? There are several reasons.

1. Some of them live in this world. It is the real world for a lot of our kids. We have to connect with their experiences.
2. It's an important lesson about making choices within limited options; the reality they live in daily.
3. They will definitely think something while they listen to this book.

I read a little piece, and then I stop and think aloud. I think about personal reactions, mostly: feelings. I am surprised that..., I think he is going to..., I wish he would...,

And then I read some more, and then I stop and think aloud some more. I make predictions, and inferences about the character. And then I explain that I'm going to start writing some of these things down. I read, and then I stop and write. I have my students do the same; I read and then I stop and they write. This is a sample of an entry I wrote several years ago.

When I get to the really shocking part: the scene in which the girl gets shot and you don't know if she'll survive, I pause. I ask students to write about that part, without knowing what the ending will bring. And they always have something to say.

The reactions students record don't have to be complex, or structured. I just want them to realize that, as they read, they think!   

After we do this together a few times, I move it to students' independent reading responses. They read and respond to their independent reading book. I read their responses, just to make sure there is thinking going on while they are reading. It's a simple way to get kids responding to their reading. 

Later, we move on to more structured responses. We start to code our thoughts based on the strategy they represent. We create sentence frames for each strategy to "help us think when we're stuck." Seriously, sometimes just saying the words, "I wonder..." or "I visualize..." helps you come up with a response!

As students get better at noticing their reading thoughts and writing about them, I model a more structured reading response. The first paragraph includes a brief summary of the reading. The second paragraph is about 3-4 sentences responding to the reading. At first, I'm just looking for authentic thoughts. Over time, I ask students to choose a focus to respond about; something their entire response will be about. This helps them dig deeper and not think so superficially about their reading. 

And for more ideas, check out "Responding to Reading," a freebie on TPT!

Or my new Scaffolded Reading Responses for Fiction!

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Five Ways to Keep Test Prep Fun!

Dun-dun-dunnnnn. It's that time again. That all-dreaded testing season. If you're like me, you love your job from August - January and then you'd like to use up all of your saved-up sick days to take a vacation until May.

Actually administering a state test is a horrendous experience. There are dozens of hilarious tips about what you can do during testing, but the truth of the matter is, you can do nothing.
 
Nothing but walk around incessantly, glancing to "make sure students are working on the appropriate section of the test" but not looking closely enough to actually read the test. You have to look over their bubble sheet to notice that they bubbled, but not close enough to notice what they bubbled. Not that it matters, because you have no idea what's on that test anyway.

Basically, the test is a blind date your friend set you up with who gets to judge you by watching you through the window of the restaurant as you wait patiently for them to arrive. You don't actually get to meet them yourself, or to hear the results of this observation until months later, when you're no longer interested in meeting such a creepy person, and your opinion does not matter.
 

Anyway, there's not much I can do to make delivering the test more interesting, but your test preparation and review can be fun. Here are four tips to keep your test prep engaging and interesting! I've used each of these tips in third - fifth grade classes, and they worked for me!

#1 Play BUMP!

 Target: Get kids moving while practicing strategies with accuracy. Timing it creates a sense of urgency.

This is a great way to get kids moving when all you're really doing is having them answer questions you would've had them answer at their desks. To play BUMP, you'll need the questions you want students to answer all cut apart. Because I require students to use strategies on each question, I make enough copies of the question so each student can have their own.

You stack all the copies of #1 up on one desk, and all the copies of #2 at the next desk, and so on. When you say, "GO!" the kids have to use their strategy to answer the question. You give them an appropriate amount of time (maybe three minutes) and then shout, "BUMP!" The kids have to move to the next question (and I make them take their copy of the question they just answered with them) and answer that. Then you shout "BUMP!" again and the process continues. My kids loved it!

To keep it focused, I always do a little minilesson on the strategy first and then all the questions are focused on kids using that exact strategy. 

#2 Toss the question ball.

Target: Hold everyone accountable, but in a (slightly) fun way.

My kids loved anything where they got to move. To keep them all engaged during not-so-exciting test prep lessons, I used to use the "Smushy Apple of Knowledge." It was just one of those little stress reliever apples. Being soft is important, because basically, I spent entire lessons throwing the apple at my students.

 Oriental trading has a whole collection here. I also used to have a little Earth that we called, "The Smushy Earth of Science". We were inspired by Bill Nye.

These are the rules:
- I ask a question.
- I say a name and toss the ball to that person.
- They must answer.
- I ask another question
- They have only three seconds to decide who to toss it to.
- They say the name and toss it to that person.
- If you take longer than three seconds, I choose where the apple goes.
- If the ball bounces away from the person it was aiming for, only one person who is closest can get up to get the ball and give it to the original person.
- No one can ask for the apple. No one raises their hand; no one shouts out, "ME!" 

The last two rules were (obviously) the result of trying to use the smush apple and realizing I needed some specifics. They keep two things from happening. 1. A student will be ready to toss the apple but spend five minutes looking around the room at all the eager faces, thinking about who to toss it to, and saying, "ummmm." 2. Half a dozen students abruptly leap out of their seats and head for the same tiny apple. 3. Half the class has their hands waving frantically in the air, shouting "OVER HERE!" and the other half isn't worried about participating because those other kids will get the apple.

#3 Partner A/Partner B

Target: Each student is accountable to their partner. Great for differentiation.

In any class, you have a diverse bunch of kids. If your class requires a lot of differentiation (even in their testing), this strategy works well. Even if it doesn't require that, this will still work well. You just won't differentiate the questions.

Here's how it works:
You identify who is Partner A and who is Partner B throughout the class. You assign one problem to Partner As and one problem to Partner Bs.  This is where you can differentiate, subtly. There can be a difference in the problem you assign Partner A and Partner B.

Each student is given an appropriate amount of time to work on their problem. Then they meet with their assigned partner. Partner A teaches their problem to Partner B and Partner B then teaches their problem to Partner A. Easy peasy, but it gets kids showing their best work, communicating about their work, and listening to another student.

# 4 Stations with test prep questions

Target: Have students practice a variety of concepts or one concept in a variety of ways. Includes some movement, and timing it creates a sense of urgency.

Stations are a great way to get kids to move through a variety of practice materials while creating a sense of structure. The day feels pretty long when everyone does this, and then everyone does that, and then you do this other thing, etc. By using stations, students feel like there is a little more energy and movement in the room and adding a timer helps them stay focused and energized.

Look at the concepts you want students to learn. For third grade math, for example, I isolated six main concepts I wanted students to practice. I made a stations activity - usually a matching activity - for each concept. For example, for fractions, I made this fractions comparing station:

For 3-D shapes, I provided students with the 3-D shape forms they could hold and manipulate, and a table to record their faces, edges, and vertices.You can also find it here.

Then, I found about five test-ish questions for each concept. I wanted students to do something hands-on and then apply that immediately to some test questions. This is the bridge we have to build for many of our struggling students.

They learn the content, but they don't always know how to demonstrate that on a test! I could then collect those questions and identify who was on target and who needed more support in which areas.

You can also read these posts about the fractions stations I used to prepare my kids for their test! Fraction Fanatic and Fraction Frenzy.

#5 Sorts

Target: Have kids think critically in an easily manageable format.

I love sorting activities! To help my students prepare for their big reading test, I made a sort that included the categories of the main genres tested (fiction, drama, expository, and poetry) and little cards with the characteristics of each genre and the strategies they would need to use. Then I added a sample of each genre and a ton of questions.

They had to sort the characteristics, strategies, and sample into each genre category. Then they had to read the questions, mark up their observations and decide which genre this probably came from. For example, if the question says, "Read the following stage directions from 'Bill and Pete,'" I know it's asking about a drama.

The genre labels, author's purpose cards, sample texts, and vocabulary cards are available on TpT!  Then just cut up an old STAAR test to sort the questions!

What fun ways do you get kids energized about test preparation?
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Historical Fiction: Accessing background knowledge with Goin' Someplace Special

With Black History Month underway, I wanted to share a successful lesson I delivered in a fifth grade class that might help your students understand the historical context of some African American literature. 

In our fifth grade classes, our bilingual students are spending the whole day in English for the first time in their school careers. We have a wide range of levels of English acquisition, from students who just arrived from Mexico to students who have spent their entire school careers in our school. 

To help the kids think about what they already know as well as develop their English speaking, listening, reading, and writing skills, one fifth grade teacher and I planned some specific activities for students while supporting their historical fiction unit.

If you haven't read this story, you should. It's a sweet story of a girl who wants to go someplace special by herself. Because of segregation laws, she isn't allowed in many places in her town. She finally reaches "someplace special," and it turns out that it's a library. Sob sob sob. 

I figured that, if students didn't understand the historical context for a story, they wouldn't be able to explain how the event created the situation for the story. So to help students as we read Goin' Someplace Special by Patricia McKissack, we started out with some pictures.

I scoured the internet (it wasn't actually that hard) for photos that depicted segregation. I wanted actual photos so students could reflect on actual historical events and understand that this story was based on true events in American history.

We divided the kids into five groups and gave each group a specific colored marker. The photos were glued on to construction paper and taped to the walls around the room. Each group went to one of the photos and had three minutes to write everything they noticed and thought on the construction paper. They used these speaking and writing stems:

I noticed...

I think...

This makes me think of...

This reminds me of...

Then they rotated to the next chart and read what the previous groups said. After reading and discussing this, they added their thinking in their colored marker.

By the time they'd been through several charts, they started picking up language from each other! They were using each other's words such as "discrimination", "strike", and "privilege."

We gathered some very interesting and enlightening background knowledge. They had a lot of concepts and were able to connect historical events and people (such as segregation, Martin Luther King, Jr., strikes, Ruby Bridges, and Rosa Parks), but they didn't have specific vocabulary. 

We worked on giving them words to express their specific ideas. A few that came up were "segregation," "African Americans" as a replacement for the outdated "colored people" phrase they were using, and "separate but equal".

After visiting each chart, I told them that the historical events pictured in the photos would be the context for our story, so we had to have a good understanding. The teams worked on writing a single sentence that would explain the historical event. 

Then we started to read the book. Each student had a copy of the story and a post-it. I asked them to read to find examples of how the historical event was represented in the story. Students marked several places where we saw the conditions of segregation affecting our story.

Using the ideas that students marked with their post-its, we created a simple cause-effect map to explain how the historical events affected the story. Then students chose another event from the story and used the sentence stems on the bottom of the above chart to record their thinking about the historical event and the story.

Students were really able to explain how the historical events affected the story! The above student obviously has a stronger handle on English written expression with errors common to English Language Learners, but even our newcomers were able to produce some response.

One student even explained, "She wanted to get to the library because all were welcome there." Awww, what a message!

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Bright Ideas: A Blast From the Past!

November's Bright Ideas post is very unique. Instead of being a million brand-new bright ideas, we're giving you a change to browse through some of the great bright ideas from the last ten months that you might have missed! 

The Bright Ideas posts are great places to get interesting and useful tips and ideas to use in your classroom without having to download anything! No freebies, no products, and no hard drive space involved! Just good teaching and great tips.

These are my Bright Ideas posts from the last year. Check them out and maybe you'll find something new to try out!

I was extra-excited about this Bright Idea. This fun Creative Writing Response for Any Book! is a good way to get kids to respond to text while encouraging them to develop their writing vocabularies, too!

Setting Behavioral Goals  is a great way to get kids thinking about their own goals for behavior while encouraging teamwork, too!

 

 I love my color-coded Response Rings for checking for understanding. I hope you love them, too!

 

Personal Editing Checklists are a differentiated tool to help individual students develop a sequence for editing their own writing!

 

 My first Bright Ideas post was about Special Delivery Book Bags, a fun way to get kids excited and engaged in reading new books you introduce to the class!

  I hope you've found some useful tips here! If you see something you like, follow my blog Check out some of the other Bright Ideas Posts below!  

An InLinkz Link-up

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