Monday, January 27, 2014

Two Writing Teachers: Writing About Reading Blog Series

Two Writing Teachers:  Writing About Reading Blog Series

Our Instructional Coach just sent me this link this morning, and I liked it so much I wanted to share it immediately!  Although today is just the first day in the series, I plan to follow this blog throughout the week to glean as many great ideas as possible.

I have never used the "Lifting a Line" strategy, but I love it!  I see huge potential for using that with my students during their current Sci Fi / Fantasy unit.  My kids are reading five different books right now:  Savvy, Among the Hidden, Uglies, Fablehaven, and The Maze Runner.  Prior to using these books, I have reread and annotated my own copies, marking vocabulary words and signposts, and underlining key points in the story.  I have also written my own thoughts in the margins of the novels, which would make it very easy for me to pick out a key sentence or two for this strategy.  It would be a great prelude to their Lit Circle discussions or Blogs as well.

The Character Webs made me a little bit dizzy.  (That must be my left-brained, concrete-sequential side objecting to that!)  However, I do want to try the Visual Note-taking strategy.  My friend Judi (whose blog I wrote about in my previous post), has also blogged about that strategy, and it seems to be highly effective with students of all abilities and learning styles.

I look forward to seeing what else these Two Writing Teachers have to share later this week!

3 comments:

  1. Marnie - Is there some sort of rubric for Lifting a Line? I do something similarly, which I thought this activity was going to be, but their responses seem guided to me... how did they know to ask questions or infer, etc? The creative spin on that I call "Steal a Line" where they take a line and write their own story, separate from the actual story, developing their own plot. I like this though because it's a really quick way to collect some feedback for what they are or are not getting out of the text. Could you also give them a line and have them do the same things?

    Thanks for sharing!

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  2. Hi Marnie -- Thanks for sharing this site! I looked through it, and it seems like there are a lot of interesting resources here. I really enjoy finding other resources to get ideas from and this looks good.

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  3. This is a great site, I have had many of the same issues with lit log letters. Responding thoughtfully to text is such an important part of how we find out about kids's thinking so I will see how I can incorporate some of these ideas with my kids.

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