Two Person Journal

One journal, one topic, one file, but two writers make a Two Person Journal. Students were partnered with a peer from another class. A folder with a file was created on the Laurelville server. The page was divided down the middle using a two column table. For the rest of the school year, students will write each day about a different topic.

This system has an advantage over a regular journal in that the writer has an audience. Everything written will be read daily. Also, with a peer to share ideas, comments, opinions, and information, it means more. Whether students write about books, school, friends, hobbies, family, or any other topic, they know a reader cares about what they have to say.

I originally did this project with composition notebooks that students shared. Now, with the technology available in Reading Workshop, students keep a common Open Office Word file saved on our file server. They can each write to the file from anywhere in the school. Because there is a computer for each student, they can access their file during class each day, read their partner's post, and respond.

This is a great motivator for students. After all, what does every writer want? To be read, of course.

How Do You Feel About Reading?

Today's post is a guest post by Shayna T. She is a sixth grade student at Laurelville Elementary.


If you don't already know, reading is an important part of your education. Reading can give you knowledge and entertainment. If you don't read you probably can't comprehend some of the most basic Social Studies, Science, Math and Writing skills. The only reason why you can't do these things is because you don't read enough! I know some people don't like to read, but sometimes you have to do things you don't want to do!

As I said earlier, some people don't like reading, but I do! Reading has helped me get A's in all of my school subjects. When I was in 3rd grade I didn't enjoy reading that much. That was before I found out about the Harry Potter books! After that I started to try more and more books until I found the right genre. The genre that I like the most to this day is realistic fiction. Realistic fiction is like where the things that happen in the book can be real, but they are not proven facts.

If you want to know where to get some really good realistic fiction books I would look in Mr. McGuire's bookshelf. Some of the best books that I read were The Outsiders, Party Girl, Define Normal, Kira Kira, Star Split and the Watchers series.

To end my post I wanted to ask you some questions about your reading habits.

1.What kind of books do you read?

2.How often do you read?

3.Do you like reading?

4. Do you read as a hobby?

Getting the Achievement Question, Part 2

As we continue to work on getting the questions, students are beginning to show remarkable progress. You can read about previous work from the Do You Get the Question post.

This is an example from Luke that demonstrates the before and after.

GREAT JOB, LUKE!

Reader Survey

Dear Readers,

Please give me a hand. I have been publishing this blog for about eight months now. Yesterday was a great day - the blog passed 5,000 hits. It is pretty remarkable to me that this blog has been viewed 5,000 times this school year. I appreciate the interest. Now, please help me make it better.

I see it as having three roles including:

1. Informing parents about events, activities, and news from our Reading Workshop,

2. Providing a forum for discussion about our Reading Workshop, reading instruction, our class, and our school,

3. Making us think, me as a writer, and hopefully, you as a reader and writer.

With this in mind, I would like your help - how can I make this blog more useful for you?

Here are some areas you might like to comment on:

• Topics - are there topics (specific or general) you’d like covered? What topics would you like to see more of? less of?
  
• Types of Posts - recaps of daily events, class instructional goals and reports, student response posts, guest posts, upcoming events…. have your say about what you’d like most/least
• Posting Frequency - too many posts, not enough, just right?
• Blog Features - what would make your reader experience better?
• And - what else do I need to know about the blog?

I would especially like to hear from parents and teachers. I appreciate the enthusiastic commenting from students, but my goal is for this blog to serve as a tool for communication with parents and teachers as well.

Active Reading

Are you an active reader? Or do you snooze along? Do you "dog it?"

Have a listen as a fourth grade student explains his view on how to be an active listener. Cooper, from The International School of Bangkok, in Thailand discusses the reading process.




Would these strategies help you as a reader? Which of the four steps--mark-up, visualize, predict, and question do you need to focus on personally? What are the implications for you when you take the Achievement Test?

Once we watched the video, and discussed it, students took the essay below, written by Roald Dahl and did the following:

1. Skim and then mark the article,
2. Describe two visualizations (things you could see as you read),
3. List 2 predictions you had as you read,
4. List 2 questions you have after reading.

Boy: Tales of Childhood
Roald Dahl

1 On the first day of my first term I set out by taxi in the afternoon with my mother to catch the paddle-steamer from Cardiff Docks to Weston-super-Mare. Every piece of clothing I wore was brand new and had my name on it. I wore black shoes, grey woollen stockings with blue turnovers, grey flannel shorts, a grey shirt, a red tie, a grey flannel blazer with the blue school crest on the breast pocket and a grey school cap with the same crest just above the peak. Into the taxi that was taking us to the docks went my brand new trunk and my brand new tuck-box, and both had R. DAHL painted on them in black.

2 A tuck-box is a small pinewood trunk which is very strongly made, and no boy has ever gone as a boarder to an English Prep School without one. It is his own secret storehouse, as secret as a lady’s handbag, and there is an unwritten law that no other boy, no teacher, not even the Headmaster himself has the right to pry into the contents of your tuck-box. The owner has the key in his pocket and that is where it stays. At St. Peter’s, the tuck-boxes were ranged shoulder to shoulder all around the four walls of the changing-room and your own tuck-box stood directly below the peg on which you hung your games clothes. A tuck-box, as the name implies, is a box in which you store your tuck. At Prep School in those days, a parcel of tuck was sent once a week by anxious mothers to their ravenous little sons, and an average tuck-box would probably contain, at almost any time, half a home-made currant cake, a packet of squashed-fly biscuits, a couple of oranges, an apple, a banana, a pot of strawberry jam or Marmite, a bar of chocolate, a bag of Liquorice Allsorts and a tin of Bassett’s lemonade powder. An English school in those days was purely a money-making business owned and operated by the Headmaster. It suited him, therefore, to give the boys as little food as possible himself and to encourage the parents in various cunning ways to feed their offspring by parcel-post from home.

3 “By all means, my dear Mrs. Dahl, do send your boy some little treats now and again,” he would say. “Perhaps a few oranges and apples once a week”—fruit was very expensive—“and a nice currant cake, a large currant cake perhaps because small boys have large appetites do they not, ha-ha-ha . . . Yes, yes, as often as you like. More than once a week if you wish . . . Of course he’ll be getting plenty of good food here, the best there is, but it never tastes quite the 1 On the first day of my first term I set out by taxi in the afternoon with my mother to catch the paddle-steamer from Cardiff Docks to Weston-super-Mare. Every piece of clothing I wore was brand new and had my name on it. I wore black shoes, grey woollen stockings with blue turnovers, grey flannel shorts, a grey shirt, a red tie, a grey flannel blazer with the blue school crest on the breast pocket and a grey school cap with the same crest just above the peak. Into the taxi that was taking us to the docks went my brand new trunk and my brand new tuck-box, and both had R. DAHL painted on them in black.

4 As well as tuck, a tuck-box would also contain all manner of treasures such as a magnet, a pocket-knife, a compass, a ball of string, a clockwork racing-car, half-a-dozen lead soldiers, a box of conjuring-tricks, some tiddly-winks, a Mexican jumping bean, a catapult, some foreign stamps, a couple of stink-bombs, and I remember one boy called Arkle who drilled an airhole in the lid of his tuck-box and kept a pet frog in there which he fed on slugs.same as home cooking, does it? I’m sure you wouldn’t want him to be the only one who doesn’t get a lovely parcel from home every week.”

This essay was copied from the Ohio Sixth Grade 2007 Reading Achievement Test.

Tell Me About A Great Book

I know you have read a book this year that is the best book you have ever read. So, tell us about it. What made it great? Why is it your favorite? Who would enjoy reading it? Give us some details, but don't give away any surprises or the ending! See the Book Letter post for ideas.

Your reward? Why how funny you should ask--a lot of extra credit. Just post in the comments. BUT, be sure you have correct spelling, punctuation, and capitalization.

What Doesn't Matter

Part of being a successful reader of nonfiction means understanding the important information. This week, we looked at reading from the other side. We looked at the article No Drivers Wanted about robot cars. This is an article about the DARPA Challenge for driverless cars. Students highlighted in pink, all of the information that wasn't important.

Student partners went through the article and looked for trivial details, unnecessary adverbs and adjectives, and minor facts, opinions, and quotes that didn't help understand the article.

Once the highlighting was completed, student partners were combined to make teams of four. The four students compared each team's work and discussed their decisions.

Scotty D. took over as the teacher next, and students looked at the article with the projector. With Brianne managing the computer, the class as a whole had to agree on what wasn't important. Today, students will use what text that is left as they search for the W's and write a gist statement.

This is how the article looked when they finished. If you look at what is not highlighted, you should be able to see the important details, and get the gist.

Tuesday, October 11—Stanley usually seems to know where he's going. He moves quickly over rocky ground and across puddles. He works hard and he's almost always on the move. Stanley is a robot car.

Last week, 23 teams—including the Stanford University team that built Stanley—gathered in the Mojave Desert in Nevada to compete in a special race known as the Grand Challenge. The race was special because none of the cars had drivers.

Stanley completed the dangerous 150-mile course through the desert in six hours and 53 minutes, earning the Stanford team a $2 million prize from the Department of Defense. Of the 23 teams that competed, only five actually finished. The others were stumped by mechanical or technological problems.

Sebastian Thrun, the lead robotics engineer for the Stanford team, realizes that driver-free, robot cars like Stanley still seem like something from a science-fiction film. "People by and large don't believe in this stuff," he said. "They've seen too many failures." This year's Grand Challenge was much more successful than last year's, when no vehicle was able to travel more than eight miles.

What Makes Reading Important?

Reading is important for so many reasons. But, what do sixth graders think? And, what do their parents and grandparents think? Although I usually hate homework on the weekend, students have a special assignment for this weekend.

They must answer the following questions:

Why do you believe reading is important?
How do you think reading skills will help you throughout your life?

In addition, they must interview either a parent or grandparent and ask them these questions to find out their opinions about reading.

It will be interesting to hear opinions. I wonder if there will be much difference between students and their parents/grandparents?

Key Words to Reading

Not all words are created equal. Some words carry a heavier weight to the reader who is tuned in to using all possible means for comprehension.

Not to be outdone by 6A, the 6B class came up with the list above and beyond all lists. Partners worked through their Scholastic News for key words that helped the reader know when an important point is about to come. Listed below are words that the discerning reader will use as keys to getting it.

1. Why- makes you think about a “W” detail; reason

2. but- opposite; something else is happening

3. and- tells that there is going to be another example

4. I think- tells you somebody's opinion; gives an example [I wonder, I thought, I know, I pictured]

5. because- gives you a reason for something

6. or- tells something different

7. said- tells somebody's opinion

8. who- makes you think about a “W” detail; person

9. however- something else is happening

10. about- gives more information

11. also- tells something is coming

12. what- makes you think about a “W” detail

13. show(s)- tells you more detail

14. when- makes you think about a “W” details; time

15. If..., then- shows a relationship

16. Each/ for example- - elaborates or tells more information

17. where- makes you think about a “W” detail; place

18. results in- causes, effect, finished product

19. point is- main idea, gist

20. difference- something else

GREAT JOB to both classes for their hard work and outstanding effort!

A special shout out to Haley and Baylie for their outstanding finds (they even outdid the combination of Mrs. Bowers and me).




Discussion for tomorrow--check your grammar and spelling before commenting (See yesterday's Blog comments).

Get a Clue Without Words

Nothing replaces reading to get the meaning, but there are a lot of other clues if you know where to search. Using Scholastic News, we focused on some of the ways a reader can figure out the gist of an article.

Here are our NOTES for today.

Clues to Get the Gist

Use everything other than words to get the gist. Look at the title, sub-titles, headings, fonts, pictures, captions, etc.

The 6A Language Arts class worked first as partners, and then as a class and compiled this list of non-word ways to understand as article.

1. Title—gives an idea of the article’s topic

2. Font—different font like bold print means word or idea is important

3. Pictures—visualize the information

4. Captions—help understand the picture

5. Colored sections—important information/ makes you want to read them

6. Subtitles—provide details to go with the title

7. Headings—tells what the section is about

8. Timeline—gives dates events happened

9. Inserts—extra information that is not necessarily part of the story

10. Graphs—shows data/statistics

11. Questions—makes you think about main points

List compiled by 6A

Learning to Read, con'd

What is important? What should we highlight? What are the W's? The students worked hard to drag the meaning out of an article, and here is what it looked like when we finished. We used the DLP projector with a student leading the discussion, and a student operator on the computer.

Reading or You're Not a Little Kid Anymore

Learning to read is the main focus throughout elementary school. However, the style of reading must change as students enter Jr. High School and above. By sixth grade, figuring out all of the words is a small part of the reading process. Students must learn to decipher meaning, especially in difficult text. Reading for the Gist, understanding the W's (who, what, when, where, why, and how), and comprehending important details becomes the focus.

Although comprehension strategies are taught in the primary grades, the techniques should change as students enter the intermediate grades. That is our objective currently in language arts class.

Our notes from yesterday illustrate our focus:

01/07/08 NOTES Reading Nonfiction 1


1.Skim
2.Read & Highlight
3.List W’s
4.List facts
5.Write a topic sentence/Gist Statement


Basically we are breaking down nonfiction articles trying to glean the most important facts and information. One particularly difficult sentence from an article in Science News Online took almost one half hour just to figure out. The sentence is written with a complex style, and uses vocabulary that was unfamiliar to many sixth grade readers. These three copies of the sentence show the process we went through to break it down and make it easier to read.


"The team has withheld from its article critical code-breaking details that could abet would-be hackers."

The team has withheld from its article critical code-breaking details that could help would-be hackers.

The team withheld details that could help hackers.

Our goal is to break down the meaning to the simplest terms, to make reading and understanding easy. This takes an immense amount of hard work and brain power. Students have been giving a great amount of effort as they are learning new reading skills.

Topics of discussion include:

Learning to Read
You Don't Have to Get it All
What Did the Writer Feel/Think as he Wrote
Reading Rate
How the W's Guide Thoughts
Predict and Revise