How Do We Handle Reading a Tough Novel?

I've been thinking a lot this year about how to get more feedback from students to make our time together more effective.  Today, our fourth day working through the tough classic The Outsiders, I wanted to know how students were handling the layers of reading they need to do -- the literal comprehension, the interpretation, the reflection, and oh, right, the enjoyment!

Students let me know how they were annotating the text and how it was going.  A few notes, as you can see above:

• Some students are going to painstaking effort to show their thinking -- emphasis on the pain. This is no good.
• Some students want to listen to me read aloud or listen to the fun voice on the CD, but they can't figure out the best way to listen, read along, and record their questions and other thoughts
• Students are doing a lot of questioning in the book and marking more questions than any other group I've had -- this has actually taken the place of more traditional predictions in our room, because we're focused on idea that come directly from the text and we anticipate will be answered by the text. (Ditto connections -- our emphasis is connecting ideas within the book) I'm pleased that our KNOW/WONDER emphasis has carried over from Wonder, which was an easier book to understand

So, we used this feedback to create the following guide/anchor chart:

Yeah... it's super messy. Thinking is that way sometimes.

We decided it was important for us to discuss three things, as we reflected on our reading processes with rigorous texts:

• Reviewed the purpose of annotating (it's a process to help us, not a product for them to show me)
• Reviewed other phrases past teachers have used to describe annotating
• Reflected on the benefits of recording our thinking

We also came up with a better game plan for next week.  Students in all classes are nearly evenly divided by how they think they can most effectively read and think about the text.  We decided that they can pick from these three in-class reading options:

• Reading silently and checking in with a peer or me
• Having me read aloud to them in a small group (a few in block 3/4 helpfully suggested I attend play practice to pick up some new reading techniques ;))
• Listening to the CD in a small group and deciding as they go when they should stop it to talk and record their thoughts.  Block 5/7 suggested the best places to stop might be the places where SE Hinton made an extra block of space, because it looks like that is where scenes or big ideas change.

What's Important? An Annotation Intervention

*Screeeeech*

Block 1 came to a screeching halt today about three conferences in to my Outsiders check-ins.  The previous night's homework had been to finish reading and annotating Chapter 1 and to submit a Google Drive form with points of confusion (things Mrs. Taylor needs to clear up) and WONDERs (things we think the book will answer... we hope!).

Careful Preparation ... but for the Right Things?
We'd prepared yesterday by:

• starting our reading together -- it's tough being dropped right into a new setting!
• thinking aloud and walking through some annotations together on the ELMO
• talking about the purpose of annotating (to help us interact with a text, NOT to create a new product) 
• discussing what we could do in our texts to show our thinking: marking questions, identifying exclamations, circling interesting/unfamiliar words, jotting down reactions and things we want to remember, and underlining important ideas.

Great preparation, right?

Waiiiiiiiit.

What did I see, y'all, when I came around to check in on your reading and to address your points of confusion?

Either 1. a whole lotta nothing underlined or 2. a whole lotta everything underlined.  When I mentioned my observation, I asked how people know what to underline or highlight in a text: "You underline what's important, Mrs. Taylor."

It was time for an annotation intervention.

What's Really Important?
We've talked quite a bit about identifying important ideas in non-fiction, but it didn't occur to me to frame the following question in the context of fiction: "How do we know something's  important in a piece of fiction?"

Check out our findings:



Many students snapped photos of our anchor chart, so they could refer to it during their next chunks of reading.  Thanks all of you for your thinking!

Sasquatch Survey Results: SUPER Helpful!

Thanks so much, everyone, for taking the time to fill out the "Sasquatch" survey so thoughtfully!  The feedback you give me is just as important as the feedback I give you. You're really helping me make sure I make the most out of our class time together.

Two other purposes of the survey were for you to think about what you know and what you weren't sure about (always good skills to develop!) and to be able to use that information to tell me what you need.

Here's what the results look like when I get them.  Thanks, eighth/ninth period kids, for discovering and using in such a productive manner the "boss" blank column. Your notes made me laugh :)

Here are the "biggies" that came up on the survey results.

Point of View
Most people listed at least one point of view that confused them.  After our point of view lesson, do you feel like you have a better grasp on point of view?

Remember what we talked about:
1. How authors, narrators, and characters are related (author is over all)
2. Signal words for each narration point of view (do you remember the signal words? I, you, they, etc.)
3. The role of each kind of narrator (for which points of view is the narrator in the story?)
4. The "powers" that each kind of narrator has (how creepy? :))

Mood
Many people mentioned that you "learned about" mood last year.  What did you learn about mood?

Two points of confusion with this question:
1. What does the word "tense" mean?
2. What section is the beginning of the story?

We will talk about those in class.

Theme
Again, I read many responses that said you "learned about" theme last year.  What did you learn about theme?

This seemed to be the toughest question for people to think about.

1. What does this theme mean? "Fool me once, shame on you.  Fool me twice, shame on me."
2.  Even if people felt like they understood that theme, people had a hard time tying that theme to the text.  One student wrote something really thoughtful -- she wrote that it was hard to tie the theme to the text because those exact lines weren't in the text.  That is definitely a challenging leap to make!

We'll go over this theme question together, for sure.

Chronological Order of Events
95% of you put the events in the correct order.  What strategies did you use to put the events in the correct order?

Resolution
The word "resolution" tripped people up.  The resolution is how the problem is solved/comes to a conclusion.  In order to identify the resolution, you had to be able to identify the problem in the story first.

Most commonly identified vocab words: Rugged, bemused, intently, cannoned, pondered, philosophically

We'll add those to our class word jars :)


Now, please comment below on any and all of the italicized questions in the post ... it'll help your classmates and make our class discussion more interesting and productive!

Using Sasquatch to Monitor Our Comprehension ... of Questions, too!

Please take the following survey to tell me more about the questions you answered for the short story "Sasquatch: A California Ghost Story."

Remember, we're working on identifying when we "get it" and when we don't "get it."  Self-monitoring is a very important skill for readers!

Exploring Close Reading with Wonder

I recently read a fabulous, Franki Sibberson-recommended book called What Readers Really Do (by Dorothy Barnhouse and Vicki Vinton).  We're thinking a lot about how real readers do things like attend to minor details to understand characters, settings, and themes; one phrase you might hear a lot in our room is, "I'm noticing that ______ really did a close reading to make that connection!"

In those conversations, we're emphasizing the importance of making within-text connections. We try to put ourselves in author RJ Palacio's shoes to think about why she might include certain details, we're working on noticing details that might be important (the more you read, the more experience you have with stories, and the better you become at figuring out what might be important!), and then we're using our KNOW/WONDER charts to develop "wonders" (text-based questions) based on those details.

Our KNOW/WONDER Charts are Growing
Our KNOW/WONDER charts are starting to have a lot of arrows between our columns.  We're starting to naturally connect ideas within the text!

Here's my messy, messy chart.  You'll notice that we're also filling up our notebook word jars (/word pumpkins/word cans/word ghosts/word aquariums/etc).  Thanks, Mrs. Caplin at Bailey for inspiring us!

Within-text Connections
Today, we had a big "aha!" moment, which is reflected in many of our readers notebooks.  We have decided that, if we're making text-based wonders and writing down text-based KNOWS, then we should see connections between our KNOW/WONDER columns.

Check out our "aha!" that started out as a new KNOW:

When Auggie's and Via's parents found out that Via hadn't told them about the play, we had wondered if she would tell them WHY she'd kept it secret.   We found out later that she had kept it secret because she didn't want her new school to know about Auggie. We figured out here that she DID end up telling Mom. KNOW!

Here's more info about our KNOW. Then we decided we needed to read back (we read forward and then sometimes read back) to figure out when Via told her mom.; we didn't know for sure, because at this point in the book, Auggie was the narrator.  We had a hunch that the quiet part, when Auggie couldn't hear what Mom and Via were discussing, must have been when Via decided to be honest with her mom.

What's Important in a Text?
With our attention to details, we've discussed and tried to sort out which details are important details now and which details might be important later.

Here's one section of the text we really wondered about:

Yesterday, we put in our WONDER columns that we wondered why the author gave this much space in the book to talking about Miranda's family.  We also WONDERED if this might explain some of Miranda's behavior changes.

We were excited to see in today's reading a new KNOW that came from this WONDER.

Our within-text connections continue!

Photos and text from RJ Palacio's Wonder, Knopf Books, 2012

Wonder: Practice Post

Look back at your readers notebook (or just picture it in your mind if you don't have it with you). In the comment section below, share one "know" from our reading of Wonder.  Then tell me what that "know" makes you wonder.  Sign your comment with your first name and your class period.

Follow the guidelines for good commenting that we learned in class today.


***Note: under "profile" choose Anonymous

Hunger Games Hysteria: How do we know a book is a good fit for us?

I take notes whenever I go through student work/assessments.  I take note of things I'd like to work on with individual students, and I also take note of patterns I notice across big groups of students.  This is how I came up with our spelling list for this Friday; I noticed a common set of misspelled words and decided that we all needed to be able to spell them correctly when we're writing about our reading.

Another pattern I noticed is that many, many sixth graders are reading or have read recently The Hunger Games.  I'm personally a big Hunger Games fan, but I wondered, based on my experiences with and knowledge of the book (basically: it's a tough read!) whether it might be a good time for us to talk some more about how we know books are good fits for us.

Here's what we talked about together in class:

Why do people choose certain books?

• Recommendations from friends, family (especially siblings and parents), teacher, librarian
• Look at bestseller lists
• Type in a genre they like
• There's a movie out (example: The Hunger Games)
• Read/hear reviews

After you choose a book, how do you know it's a good fit? (for independent reading)

Thanks, R, for sharing your table's work!

• Start out with the good ol' five finger rule.  Each student, and then each group, identified all of the words on page four of The Hunger Games that sixth graders might not understand.  We defined "understand" as "able to explain the word meaning to someone else and then use the word in a new sentence." All groups found at least five tough words on this page; by this rule, Hunger Games is pretty hard.
• You need to be able to re-tell what you read
• Make sure you can imagine/visualize what's going on
• You should be able to read it smoothly/fluently out loud
• You should be able to make logical predictions
• You should be able to ask logical questions beyond "What is going on?!?!"
• You should be able to make notes off to the side or on a sticky
• If you're trying really hard to understand (like using context clues to understand confusing words), and you're getting frustrated, you should try something else

What do we do if we think it's not a good fit after all?

• Try listening to it on CD
• Get an adult to read it to you and talk to you about it
• Buddy read/check comprehension
• Read a summary of the book, so you know more about it, but then choose a different independent book
• Wait a few months/year and try again 
• Ask someone for books that are similar
• Hunger Games examples: The Line, The Maze Runner (this one is tough, too!), The City of Ember