Response Strategies Using Writing
Writing helps students reflect on what they have read and make their thinking explicit. Writing helps to clarify their ideas, organize thoughts, and develop insights. Teachers are using a variety of strategies to encourage students to reflect, react, and respond to literature through writing. Some of the writing is informal; for example writing in logs or journals. Some more formal writing activities flow from the past, as in traditional book reports. Some involve having students writing in different genres; for example, writing a new ending for a poem, turning a story into a poem, or writing a letter from one character to another. All require the students to enter into the world of the book and frame their own unique responses.
Responding to literature through writing can take different forms. This section provides strategies on three common forms of writing:
Response Logs and Journals
Literature response logs and journals encourage students to reflect on their own reading experiences before hearing from their teachers and peers. These logs can be private free-writing journals, a safe place for students to express their thoughts. When teachers read logs they use them as ways to conduct an informal dialogue with their students about their reading experiences. Teachers can insert informal, written comments related to a student's entry.
Sites That Matter
Check out the sites below for more information on response journals and learning logs for responding to literature.
Journaling describes nine different journaling techniques including double entry, dialogue, and reflective journals.
www.sdcoe.k12.ca.us/SCORE/actbank/sjournal.html
Coming to Know: Writing to Learn in the Intermediate Grades describes Nanci Atwell's use of a double-entry journal.
www.carolhurst.com/profsubjects/comingtoknow.html
Responding to Reading offers an overview of reading logs, split page journals, and partner dialogue journals. It also has the following forms for classroom use: Reader Response Record Sheet, and Sample Student Reading Log. Scroll down for "Responding to Reading" section.
www.sasked.gov.sk.ca/docs/mla/read.html#respond
The common vision of a traditional book report includes summarizing a piece of literature and then offering an opinion or recommendation to other readers. In an effort to freshen up book reports, teachers have developed engaging new strategies that take us beyond the book reports of the past.
Sites That Matter
Check out the sites below for more information on response strategies for beyond book reports.
Book Report Ideas at Web English Teacher is the place to start. It offers a MUST SEE list of links to alternate ways of doing "book reports."
www.webenglishteacher.com/bookreports.html
Reading Plans from the Teacher's Desk is designed for 5th and 6th grade teachers. Click on the Written Response to a Novel, More, and Still More Written Responses to a Novel links.
www.teachersdesk.org/reading_plans.html
When is a Book Report Not a Book Report? When It's Fun! offers the expertise of three teachers' ideas for alternative book reports.
gretchenle.com/bkrptsindex.html
Literature Teacher Activity Bank lists nine different ways of responding to a book.
www.sdcoe.k12.ca.us/SCORE/actbank/tliterat.htm
Teachers Corner—Book Reports that Work offers many ways to respond to a book.
www.ops.org/reading/insights.html
Ann Arbor District Library Presents: World of Reading allows students to go online to read other students' book reviews and write their own.
www.worldreading.org/
E-pals Online Book Club provides a place to respond to and write book reports. www.epals.com/projects/book_club/
Global Book Club: A Collaborative Reading Experience for Middle School Students highlights an online response site. It shares three outstanding young adult novels each month. It is hosted by teachers who offer teaching suggestions for each book.
www.ncsu.edu/globalbookclub/home.html
Gaggle.Net provides free filtering email for teachers to monitor their students' email. It's an easy and safe way to have students respond to one another about literature or any topic. gaggle.net
Teachers looking for ways for students to respond to literature at the critical and analytical level may choose to have students write in another genre (e.g., from a story to a poem). This type of writing requires the highest level of thinking skills including synthesis and evaluation. To transform responses into another genre requires thorough knowledge of the book, its language, and style. For example to write a poetic response to a novel requires students to consider carefully their understanding of and response to the novel. They then must know about the poetic form they are using and be able to transform their understanding into this different genre.
Sites That Matter
Check out the sites below for more information on response strategies for writing genre-to-genre.
Scholastic Writing with Writers guides students in reading and writing in specific genres—poetry, myths, folktales, fairy tales, and biographies.
www2.scholastic.com/teachers/authorsandbooks/authorstudies/authorstudies.jhtml
Historical Fiction: Ms. Ahooja's 7th Grade English Class displays samples of students' fictional adaptations of historical events written in the first person.
www.dalton.org/ms/7th/english/historical_fiction/map.html
Matrix of Examples—WebQuests provides online units sorted by curriculum areas. Check out the English language arts projects, including "Mythology Newsletter" in which students transform myth stories into a newspaper and "Light in the Forest" where they assume the role of one of the characters.
webquest.sdsu.edu/matrix/6-8-Eng.htm
A Voyage into Narnia is a model web site showcasing students' responses to the Narnia stories, character stories, conversations between characters, letters from one character to another, and student retelling of chapters. Visit the Assignment Packet to see the teacher's assignments that generated this student work.
www.dalton.org/ms/narnia/
Life in the Middle Ages uses the novel Catherine Called Birdy and has the students assume the role of a character from the Middle Ages. They then write in the style of the diary kept in the book.
www.kenton.k12.ky.us/Webquest/gardner.htm
Responding to Literature: Folk Tale Letter Writing provides a lesson showing how students write letters to younger students in the character of folk or fairy tale characters. www.qesn.meq.gouv.qc.ca/folklore/activity/TC-lett3.html
|
