Celebrations

I have so many posts rolling around in my head and just need to find the time to type them up! Until then, here is a quick glimpse into reasons for excitement this week...

1) I started weekly book response letters. It was a great feeling to respond to my students and to have that individualized interaction with them. It is going to be a great record of their growth as readers. At first I found the idea of responding to all 50 of my students on a weekly basis daunting. However, I figured out a system that works for me.
*I looked at my 6th and 7th grade class lists side by side and figured out how I could break up the alphabet in order to have a manageable amount of students hand in their reader's notebooks. Looking at the lists helped me to tailer it specifically to my students this year, rather than choosing arbitrary points in the alphabet.
*Rather than writing my responses to my students, I decided to type them notes. This is not only more time efficient but it also helps students to understand my comments better. They have often said that they can not read my handwriting since they are not as familiar with cursive writing. I have tried printing before, but it is hard to print for an extended length. Typing the responses will work out great. I staple them to their letter page.
*If students are participating in a book club for the week, they will not write me a book response letter. The letters are the same format as their book club book responses, so I will give them credit for their weekly response letters based on their book club response. This is both fair for students and again helps it to be manageable time-wise for me.

2) I am quickly gaining confidence with conferring. I will be posting a lot more about this with my Conferring Walk-Aways posts. The mixture of conferring and book response letters is going to provide me with such valuable information about my students as readers, in order to better communicate to parents and help move them along to the next level to extend their reading abilities.

3) I started my first ever on-line book club this week. Everything went fairly smoothly, and I am excited about the possibilities with this new piece. I will be relflecting on this in more detail later as well.