Tuesday, January 15, 2013

Article of the Week: I love reading your annotations!

I was so impressed with a lot of the thinking I saw on last week's Article of the Week about Antarctica!
The comments you write on articles are so much richer than they were at the beginning of the year; it's fun for me to read and respond to your reactions.

For example, many of you noted that you were surprised that people in Siberia might leave their cars running all day, just to make sure that the cars will drive when necessary.  I wondered right along with you about how much money people must spend on fuel for their cars, and I also wondered if fuel is extra expensive in that part of the world, due to its isolation.  I did some more reading about this level of cold, and I couldn't believe how well some people have adapted to it.  Check out this related article.

Your annotations open up conversations to me, so thank you!

Practice Giving Feedback
Let's take a look at some of the answers you gave me to the questions.  I purposely left vague feedback on these model papers, because I want you to practice looking at each other's thinking in a thoughtful way and then leaving specific compliments.
Model for Mrs. Taylor to use

Here's what you need to do in the comment section.

Choose one of the three pieces below, read it carefully, leave a specific compliment describing what was strong about the piece, and sign your comment with your first name ONLY, plus your period (3/4, 5/7, or 8/9).  Select "anonymous" to leave your comment.

I will leave a comment below modeling for you a comment about
<------- this example

You may leave a comment about any of these three examples:

Example 1

Example 2

Example 3

8 comments:

  1. I found the example to be clearly organized, which made it easy to read and to understand the writer's thoughts. The writer's reason for placing a picture between the second and third paragraph made a lot of sense to me, because the picture would go with the ice and snow the article talks about in that section.

    I also noticed that the writer broke down parts of the question, numbering each of them to make sure that he/she answered the question completely. The writer also took notes about the different text features he/she could have written about!

    Mrs. Taylor
    Pr. 3/4/5/7/8/9

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  2. For example 2 I like how the writer wrote notes off to the side, underlined important details, circled specific examples, and asked questions about the information.
    I really wished my writing looked like that!!!

    Ameesha Narang
    per. 8/9

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I enjoyed reading example 2, because I felt like it was a conversation. I enjoy reading all of students' notes, because it gives me an idea of what y'all are thinking in those brilliant brains of yours :)

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  3. For example 3 I like how the writer put quotation marks around phrases from the text. The writer shows examples of those phrases which is really cool. Neat handwriting!!!

    Ameesha Narang
    per. 8/9

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I agree that the examples were really powerful; I could see that he really understood how to use the text to figure out the word meaning!

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  4. I like how in example three the person said exactly what words she thought made it sound more aggressive and gave a good description of mercilessly.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Troy mcconnaughey 3/4 period

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    2. I also liked the specifics of example three, Troy -- it's helpful to other students that this writer showed exactly how it sounded more aggressive, rather than just saying he used the words around it to figure out that it was aggressive.

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