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Home : 2002 : October : 8
I think we may be doing some things very much alike and some things very differently. One of the things I think we are doing differently is the way we handle response letters in their journals. I assign reading
Since they write their responses based on the IR reading books at school, that's one way I hold them accountable. Here are some other ways I keep up with where my students are in their independent reading books. I found that I was losing track of some of the students who were not instantly able to self-start and follow through on their own, so I decided to take Status of the Class. I record the book title and page number students are on each day. I can keep track of all the students and know when to check in with students who are not reading very many pages each day to see what's wrong and to discuss a solution. I've been doing it for about 2 weeks now and find it an invaluable tool. It's also documentation and basis for grading. My students fill out a little half-sheet form that I call "How to Choose a Book I'll Read and Not Ditch." With it they go through a process of reading a couple of pages from the book and recording the number of unknown words on the page to determine if the book feels just right or too challenging. I feel my students are more thoughtful in their book selections when they work through this short process. Another thing I've done (with the help of another poster over on the TAR Board) is develop a scoring guide that works well for me. I can actually grade students (one time each week) on their reading behavior during IR time. I also make anectdotal records as I observe students as they participate in Reader's Workshop which gives me additional info when I am ready to mark the scoring guide at the end of the week. I can give you more info on this scoring guide if you are interested. I use a form I call "Daily Reading Record of Thoughts and Connections" that has a section for each day of the week. At the end of Reader's Workshop, I give students about 5 minutes to write down any thoughts or connections they've made while reading. I collect them on Friday and give them a quick look for completeness. Filling in this sheet is graded component on the scoring guide I mentioned above. I think I said this before, but I really feel like I've got to make sure I can keep track of where students are in IR and that they know what to do "next" without having to ask me before I am ready to start guided reading groups/literature studies. I think alternating the IR/GR with LS?IR is a wonderful way to do it. I don't think F&P advocate having all components going at once all the time. Right now we are doing a big writing push to prepare kids for the district quarter comm. arts test that will be given next week, so I am content for now just to continue IR for the rest of this week. Next Monday is my goal for pulling together a couple of GR groups. About Reader's Theater, go to the website readinglady.com and look at the Reader's Theater choices there. I downloaded several that I thought would be really fun for kids. Here are a couple of examples of what I found: Dinorella and Wodney Wat. Those are the ones I am planning to do rather than some of the dull, boring ones I found in books. I don't know yet about accountability for this component. Actually, now that you mention it, I haven't really thought about it. Maybe we can come up with something together! As you said, "A work in progress!!!!!" Talk to you soon, P.S. I don't mind carrying on this conversation here, but I was just thinking, we might get some other teachers who are as interested as we are and who will chime in with ideas that will benefit us all if we talk on the TAR Board. It's something to consider.
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