Reading Conversations

My social studies/literacy block has migrated exclusively into literacy. I'm really excited about how things are going thus far. We're doing novel study, which is really another way of saying literacy circles, book clubs, or guided reading. The latter of those is the most tenuous, but still fits.

In reality my literacy block is a combination of many different practices. It uses a workshop model, pulling out lessons from the Units of Study for Reading. I have kids writing in journals with stop and jots, or making notes on sticky notes. I conference like I might in the workshop model, or with guided reading. I will take notes in OneNote, having kids give a retelling before some oral reading. I'll follow that up with positives or constructive pieces. I am also using the Guided Reading model of writing about reading, focusing on analyzing texts, making inferences and predictions. Finally it comes together with end of the week book club work where we are talking about books.

Compared to last year I am having kids write less. I used to give kids a Fact Question Response sheet, with another sheet for an element we were working on (setting, character map etc). But I found that to be a bit much. Some kids struggled with the amount of work, or just simply weren't detailed enough. Instead I've found the workshop model to be more successful, and to give me more time to work with kids on what they are reading.

The best part of it all was in my last group today. We were talking about characters and how we describe them. Kids had listed a variety of traits, internal and external. I did a short read aloud from Emmy and the Incredible Shrinking Rat, focusing in on how Lynne Jonell describes Emmy. At a stopping point I had kids turn and talk to describe Emmy thus far. The room erupted in conversation, and kids were excited to describe her, almost as though they couldn't wait to tell their shoulder partner. When we group shared the level of character traits were fantastic. Kids were making connections to characters in other books (unprompted) and able to explain why they thought Emmy embodied a particular trait ("she has a little bit of mischief in her, because you can see she kinda wants to do what the rat is telling her."). I couldn't have been happier.