Reading Workshop : Journals Usage:

       

ASSESSING STUDENTS COMPREHENSION

USING BOOKS, STICKY NOTES AND READING JOURNALS

        As an Educator,  I hope that like me that you reflect on your year, your lesson plans, your classroom management, arrangement etc.  The first thing that I look at and reflect on is how effective did set up, explain and model the usage of resources for the Reading workshop.  When we were hybrid,  the students had a daily prompt in google slides that was loaded to canvas where they responded to daily over the books they read, or a short article or passage I attached to the prompt.  It went well but I was really missing the paper journals we always used pre Covid. So I was excited to know that we were going full in this year.  I purchased  composition books , and had admin to order more for me to make sure all 90 kids had one. 

    So what do you use for journals?  I loved using journals for all subjects when I was self contained. Journals are a great tool to have students to reflect on lessons, do Do Now/daily prompts, exit/reflection prompts and for daily responses to independent task.  So you want to give them  a try this year? Let me share my thoughts with  how to get started.   First of all ,make sure you set up a model journal for yourself.  I do everything I have the students do.  They need to know they are not just doing busy work and that teachers value the task so much they are doing it as well.

        My  first 3 weeks are used to get to know students and set up expectations and norms for the class and setting up journals is one of those expectations. I tell kids a head of times that we will be setting up journals and they have the options to bring pictures to decorated the cover, but know they will be glued down to the cover so get permission from parents because the picture will be damaged if they try to take it off at the end of the school year.  It needs to be one they know won't be returned.  So on the day of journals set up  I read aloud one of  Amelia's Notebooks By Marissa Moss.  I show students a set of her books and we just list out what we notice Amelia using her notebooks for daily.  I will then bring out my journals from previous years and place one on each groups table and allow them to do the same thing.  List out what they notice I did as a Reader.  We would then discuss and share out what they had in common and discuss the differences and determine what else we need to add to our anchor chart to demonstrate the expectations for their own journals for the year.  

     Next we discuss how she made the covers of her journals her own as well as my journal covers.  This leads to the discussion of why they bought pictures to school and the supplies in the middle of the tables.  Students will be given a set time to decorate, and teachers job is to walk around, monitor and provide feedback to students.

     I  then pass out journals  and white cardstock.  I have kids to write their names, and class period on a piece of white card stock paper that I precut and clue it to the center of the journal.   Each table will have scissors, glue, pictures I created for those that don't bring photos and a few magazines they can cut from.

   After kids have decorated their journals, we began working on setting up or creating of the journals.  There are many ways this can be done,  this is just one of many.  I find myself changing them up some years.

JOURNAL SET UP TIPS:

Page 1:  What do good readers do?  draw a person in the center and write words, or phrases of things you think a good reader should do?  For example:  make predictions, ask questions, read daily, choose just right books-  

Page 2:  Title :Goals

Page 3  Genre charts

Page 4:  Reading survey

Page 5:  My reading life analysis

Page 6/7   How to choose book mini anchor chart/ Book list/

Page 8/9    unit Vocabulary/Tier 2 vocabulary

     I  block off  a number of pages ( usually 10) to use for Do Now's , Exit tickets or a long written response to a sticky note or teacher given prompt. ( iI usually set up by  nine weeks since there will be a unit page after the sections. )

       Students will glue in the unit page that I have copied.   This will be page 21.  From this point on  the next unit page will be a different color followed by 10 pages for reading responses.   We have a total of 5 Reading units.  Students respond to independent books using stick notes, or premade sticky notes that are placed on a wall  poster that I have numbered based on seats in class.  students will place these on their number on designated days by the teacher, those not posted are glued in their journals. 

      So what I did was prewrote journal prompts, and question stems based on 6th grade standards that can align with any grade standard talking about writing about one's reading, responding to ones reading or providing text evidence to support their reading.

I have a Fiction Reading set, a Nonfiction Reading set, and questions stems for general Ed blended with higher level questions I used for my GT class in my TPT store Education Readers by MrsEduc8te.

               

                

     These resources are a great way to check students understanding,  create discussions between partner, to use during conferences, to use as formative or summative assessment.  I have even used them during my Read Alouds, stopping to monitor student comprehension.

   I definitely prefer to have the hard back composition books over the use of online.  It is easier  to hold kids accountable, because they are working on them during class, I can give immediate feedback to students. Where as on line,  they have to submit the task, tell me they submitted if they want some feedback, and then un submit  the journal to do their next entry.

                                                                             

Not your ordinary Test Prep

As a reading teacher, I am always looking of ways to enhance my instruction, and to come up with engaging ways for readers to teach reading skills to 6th graders. We all know once January hits, things get really crazy. We have to contend with Telpas calibration, Telpas writing collections, Telpas testing, preparing for state testing. So how do we prepare for state testing usually is cramming test passages after test passage down kids throats. I don't know about you but I feel that is a waste of time and energy. There is a better way!

I can pull test questions from the State test and engage students into a discuss about what they notice. So here is how it works in my class.

First Idea:

Day 1:

1. We lay the questions out and read through them and students work as a table and pull vocabulary that we are unfamiliar with and make an anchor chart of them.

2. We categorize whether the words are Academic vocabulary or Tier 2 vocabulary.

3. They then work together determining if the word a word necessary to answer the question or to understand the questions

4. We then discuss how to determine the meaning of unknown words:

- we talked about using context clues, use the ideas in the text

- we talked about using a Thesaurus and a dictionary (online and textbook)

5. Students by now have narrowed the list down with the help of me guiding them through the questioning. SO they work to create frayer models over the words they still don't know the meaning.

6. We create an anchor chart of representing Tier 2 words and academic words.

Day 2

1. we read through the questions and determine where we could possible find the answer to the text: Using QAR- which I previously taught.

they have a large poster of the QAR chart and they sort their questions. Students are then allowed to walk around and do a gallery walk of their table mates poster and go back and determine if they want to change anything based on their walk.- they put a sticky note on it and explain why they moved it if they did. Teacher checks each table giving feedback.

Day 3

1 We work on identify the reading skills that the questions address. We talk about/review the meaning of those skills we have learned and make an anchor chart of those we haven't addressed.

Day 4

1. We read the questions and work through which question doesn't effectively address the skill the question is asking about.

2. Strategies to answer questions is addressed at this point.

Day 5:

1. We talk about different reading genre and create anchor charts of the characteristics

2. students are then task to work in pairs and read the passage that the questions we have worked on all week and answer the questions.

3. Teacher is doing voice overs to help to scaffold and guide students as they answer, reminding them of strategies.

More great ideas that I have used are:

• Sorting activities,
• Task cards
• Do Now- Staar like question stems
• Create Jeopardy games
• Use Padlet or Booklet

Another great idea is to use the learning targets that have been found to be on most of the old state test and and create lessons specific to the Teks and the question types can be rewritten over a mentor text.

I have create bingo reading response boards around Teks, or use the question stems from a standard test and write questions about a read aloud or reading passage students will be reading independently.

So you see there are so many other ways to prep students for Standardize state test rather than having kids do passage after passage. I feel like doing that harms more then it helps. Kids are so tired of looking at passages they will either excel or fail. In my opinion most kids will get tired and not take the test serious and just skim passages or just mark without reading the questions.

Doing these activities, I feel exposed them to the staar in various ways. The structure, the vocabulary, the questions, and test taking strategies using unconventional tools and activities.

You can use mini passages to teach and practice skills that can be tested,

challenge kids to use vocabulary in sentences and in oral discussions. I just know heir are more creative ways to practice and set kids up to be prepared for a state exam.

Yes eventually, I expose them to a passage from each genre with the questions and we work through them as a class, in partners and groups, after working a passage for every genre.

The kicker to all this is I start way before the state test date, I hold kids accountable all year, my word walls are up , anchor charts are up, I reteach in small groups. I don't wait until the month before or weeks before the test to start prepping them for the test.

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