[LIT] Prompts Take Two

[Lucinda Marcello]

Bill,
The blogging for Readers Response Journals that includes a plot summary and 
a personal reaction sounds very enticing for this age group. I will check it 
out to see if we could do it at our school.

What website do they use to blog in? Is it internal or on the Net?

Thanks for your super responses. Everyone has had such wonderful answers 
with ideas that are working in classrooms across the country. Very exciting 
indeed.

Lucinda
7th Grade Language Arts
Secrist Middle School

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Bill IVEY" <bivey at sbschool.org>
Sent: Sunday, October 21, 2007 12:10 PM
Subject: Re: [LIT] Prompts Take Two


> "A list for improving literacy with focus on middle grades."
> <lit at literacyworkshop.org> on Sunday, October 21, 2007 at 12:20 PM -0500
> wrote:
>>Do you have reading logs for your students or how do you encourage
>>reading & responding? I am wondering how valid they are after our first
>>quarter.
>
> Hi!
>
> Sorry, I left this part of the question out of my last response. We don't
> have reading logs - I tried that for about a week my first year, and
> dropped it because it seemed to punish the avid readers by giving them
> more paperwork. We do have online blogs (set up by Keith Mack) where they
> write weekly Readers Response Journal entries. I believe in the importance
> of summarization (Rick Wormeli, for one, is a big advocate of this skill),
> so part of it is a plot summary, but also I ask them for personal
> reactions. I write responses to each and every entry, and try to make for
> a conversational feel. Sometimes, kids will comment on each other's
> entries as well, though I haven't wanted to require that. I can keep track
> of how much they're reading this way without having them fill in a reading
> log.
>
> I do feel that their skills continue to grow through the year with this
> system. Once, when a couple of parents were challenging my effectiveness
> with their daughter, I was able to show the first vs. most recent RRJ as
> one piece of pretty solid evidence of her growth in many ways, and they
> were actually pretty pleased.
>
> Take care,
> Bill Ivey
> Stoneleigh-Burnham SChool
>
>
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