My First Week -- Beginner's Luck

9/23/13

Today I graded the first set of reading response journal entries, and I have to say that I am SO pleased with the results already.  I remember that last year I was always so frustrated at a variety of things about these notebooks, and I never felt like I used them well.  This year I have changed around a few things in my schedule and I think that has made a huge impact.  First, I gave our reading block time about 15 minutes extra, and I have shortened up our reading focus lesson.  This allows for about 20 extra minutes of reading time every day, which  about doubles the amount of independent reading time that we had last year—that’s huge!  This means that my students have about 40 minutes every day for our independent reading block time.  Students are able to read independently for the first thirty minutes, and then write in their journals for the rest of the time.  Giving students at least ten minutes to write in their journals has made a really huge difference as well.  I notice that the entries are quite a bit longer than last year’s—they’re typically about half a page or more.  I also notice that since I don’t always feel like I’m rushing the independent reading time, I am more consistent about giving the class time to write in their journals at least three times a week.  Last year I was hesitant to give up independent reading time (since we only had about 20-30 minutes a day), and so I only had students write in their journals 1-2 times a week.

One thing that I am looking forward to seeing a change in is the way that students respond and reflect.  Right now, the students are very good at writing a summary of what they read and introducing the characters.  What I would like to see is students writing a summary, but then also responding to what they are reading.   I would love to see students asking questions like “Why is this character behaving like that?” or “I wonder what will happen next?” or even offering their own opinion about what a character is doing.  My hope is that I can provide enough questions and notes in my grading that most students will be pointed in the right direction.

Another thing that I found challenging last year was grading the notebooks.  I got hung up on documenting each entry by taking a photo of it for Evernote, and this made the grading process take about an hour instead of twenty minutes.  Although I do want to find a way to keep track of some of their progress electronically, I can see that my system from last year was not a good way to keep me motivated to do the grading.  My goal for this year is to grade at least one entry for each student per week—I think that will be manageable.  I’m hoping that by providing each student with a good deal of feedback, they’ll stay on track and be able to write the kinds of entries I’m hoping they’ll write.