Staying In-the-Know
with Mrs. Drayton
Dutch Fork Elementary School The Academy of Environmental Sciences, Title I
2.22.18
VIP Folders & Reminders
- Weekly work & grades
- 2/27/18 Middle School Field Trip
- 2/28/18 Richlex Panel Presentation @ 8:30
- 3/9/18 Cursive Writing due, pages 44-67
- 3/23/18 Feb/Mar Reading Goals Sheet due
Book, Head, Heart Thinking
Growing ourselves as readers...
If we are focusing on the book, then we ask:
- What's this about?
- Who's perspective & why?
- What does the author want me to know?
If we are focusing in our head, then we ask:
- What surprised me?
- What does the author think I know?
- What changed, challenged, or confirmed my thinking?
If we are focusing on our heart (feelings/reactions), then we ask:
- What did Iearn about me, others, and/or the world?
- How will this help me be a better reader?
Using this strategy has allowed us to read and think differently and in much more sophisticated ways! Our conversations have definitely been lifted. We have focused a lot on talking our way into understanding. To support this talk we have used sketches to demonstrate our thinking.
Invitation: If your reader loves to sketch or is reluctant to write, have him or her try this out at home! Sketches demonstrate the meaning you take away from the text. It is clear what you reader found most important by what was include in the picture. This would be such a fun & quick strategy to try out at home together.
Because our talk has been so lifted and we have been tackling texts in new ways, we are also responding in our writing differently. Questions we have tackled this week are:
- How do the character's actions help you understand the character's traits?
- How do the character's actions advance the plot of the story?
In order to respond to this well, our learning has been a journey of thinking about our process as readers and writers. Some things we have done are:
- engaged in a shared reading of a text
- taken notes about the character during the shared reading
- talked around inferences made and new understanding about the character, as well as, plot and the theme
- built stamina by rereading the text independently and highlighting character actions
- made inferences about character actions (this is the analysis piece we have been working so hard on!)
- crafted responses based on our talk and conclusions as a class, small groups, and individually
- analyzed our own ability to respond to the text using text evidence and our own thinking based on what we read