Nice Reaffirmations

It is always nice for students to hear students make comments that validate the teaching practices I do. Today some of my students participated on a panel of students at our school for some university students taking a children's literature class. I had been excited for the panel, thinking my students would enjoy talking about the books they love. Yet, I didn't realize until after that it would also be an experience to reaffirm my literacy beliefs. This afternoon the college professor who was coordinating the panel was sharing different comments from my students about what they like about class and how they find books. For example, they brought up Author Tip Tuesday, book talks, reading response letters and our classroom library. I am glad that I have been able to play a role in my students' literacy lives, and look forward to spending one more year with this particular class!

Reading Response Letters Update

Earlier this year I mentioned that I started having my students write Reading Response Letters. Last week as all of their Google Accounts got set up, I switched the assignment that used to be in their reader's notebook over to email. I am going to experiment a little to see if I prefer this or their notebooks. For me it is a toss up. I love typing because I am able to get my thoughts out quickly, whereas my hand can't always keep up. However, for some of my students it may be the opposite. I might eventually leave it up to my students to decide which they prefer.

The email format is easier for me to correct because I can read and respond from home versus reading notebooks only at school since they are so big and bulky to carry around.

I am also experimenting with having students include a couple of their classmates on their reading response email. This would not be as easy to facilitate with notebooks. They are able to interact a little bit more about their reading with email.

In addition, I just started writing a weekly blog post on our classroom blog that is a reading response post to my students, and they leave me questions. I have been writing a couple of questions for them to ponder related to my post at the end. Once I started writing them I quickly thought of many ideas for future posts. As I am conferring with students during reading workshop the ideas start flowing. For example, last week two of my students were rereading books, yet their thought process was completely different. One was rereading but had not noticed anything he forgot the first time, while the other was rereading a book for the 6th time that she had reread throughout various years. She was able to talk about why she loves the book and how she has read it differently as she has grown older. This sparked my idea to write my post this week about why I love rereading books from time to time and to give insights into my experiences with rereads.

I always love reading my students thoughts about reading and their current books. While there have been weeks when I was buried in journals, I still love the component. For next year when I will have three classes I am trying to evaluate whether I will be able to keep up every single week or not. I have considered the possibility of having students complete them weekly interacting and responding to their small group and then having me respond directly to them on a rotating basis. That way they would be writing each week, but I would not always be the one responding to all of my students. The social aspect of sharing about their reading would still have gains for them, while still being manageable for me time wise.

Time will tell what ends up being the ideal set-up for my classroom, but in the meantime I am willing to experiment and fine-tune.

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.