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.
