Class Notes: Independent Reading Unit

Ubd Unit: Personal Reading History 11th Grade EQs: • What is the role of the individual in creating and sustaining change? Essential Questions: Goals: • Students will use different strategies to process, analyze, and engage with text. • Students will investigate a text on multiple levels. • Students will extend their analytic writing from having given prompts (Grade 10) to longer multi-focus literary essays. • The class will initiate literature-personal links. • Students will apply conventions of fiction writing to their own work. Students will know... Students will be able to... Performance Tasks (Highlighted in blue below) • Book Selection + Defense • Weekly “Reading Tracker” with goal setting and prompted response • Reviews and Commenting on Good Reads • Genre Group Discussions • “Reading History” Benchmark Other Evidence: • All-class discussion • Individual conferences with the teacher Connections to Core Values: • Inquiry: Book circle discussions, learning about each other's texts and exploring that genre. • Research: Investigating what books would appeal to them; exploring class posts and ideas on GoodReads • Collaboration: Genre groups • Presentation: Good Reads Reviews • Reflection: Weekly Reading Tracker, Sample Daily Lesson Plan Week 1 Day 1 Journal: What's the last book you read that you truly enjoyed? And why that book? Procedure: - Read Reader's Bill of Rights to the class. Powerpoint available here, or find the raw information at: http://libraryvoice.org/2008/06/05/the-reluctant-readers-bill-of-rights/ - Discuss ways to pick something you think you'll like - Introduce popular books on hand in the class, preview a couple other titles in class. - Have students sign up for goodreads.com - Vocab and/or 2Fer HW: Make your definite choice, and bring in your book! (If you've got it, start reading!) Day 2 Journal: read! Procedure: - Set up the Independent Reading Tracker. Caveat: As the reader's bill of rights states, you have a right not to read (or finish) a book that you start. Once you sign up for a title, however, Ms. Pahomov asks you to "give it a chance" for 25 pages before switching titles. - When done: independent reading time HW: Read read read read. Reading Tracker Prompts Week 1: Is your book a "holiday," a "just right," or a "challenge" title? How do you know, and why did you pick this level of difficulty? Week 2: Did you get to your reading happy place this past week? If yes, describe how and why. If no, what do you need to do differently this week? (Rough guideline -- I usually assign 75 pgs a week when we're reading an all-class book, so if you're not moving at at least that pace, you need to re-think your strategy.) Week 3: Find one of these literary devices in your book and describe what effect it has on you, the reader: hyperbole personification alliteration metaphor simile onomatopoeia Alternate challenge: Have students go onto www.Literary-Devices.com and pick their own item -- or a few! -- to work with. Week 4: What is a major theme in your book? What actions or ideas in the book are showing this theme to the reader? (The theme is a main idea that should be shorter than a thesis statement, but more than a single word or something cliche like "love is eternal.") Week 5: Who is a main character in your book, and can you relate to them? Give some specific examples of why you do or do not connect with them (maybe some of both). How does this affect your relationship with the book? Week 6: Compare two different books you've read -- how has your EXPERIENCE of reading them been different? If one was easier to read than the other, why? Really think about it to describe how it felt to read each title. Day 3 Journal: independent reading! Procedure: - Talk more about reading strategies. Introduce students to Literary-Devices.com. - Set up GoodReads pages -- list your current book, make sure you're a part of the class group HW: READ for tomorrow Day 4 Journal: What makes a review of a product trustworthy? Procedure: - Read Updike's rules for reviewing - Paraphrase in your own words (group activity on chart paper) - Read a couple reviews off of the good reads site, and evaluate them based on Updike's rules - Explian the procedure for posting reviews and making them available to Ms. Pahomov HW: Air: 2fers, Fire: Vocab Day 5 Journal: Mandatory prompts about your book Procedure: - Break into genre groups - Share out first: how are you doing compared to first impressions? - Then, start to work on your "genre lists" - what makes a book successful in this genre? (Everybody takes notes, one person will have to post in the end) - At the end, make sure everybody is on good reads and has joined the group, and has their book on their shelf HW: Benchmark: “Reading History” Reading is something we do all the time -- so much so, that we rarely really think about how and why we read. Your task with this benchmark is to take a close look at your reading -- the personal history behind your readership, and also your skills as reader today. Notice what you read and why those were the choices you made. Here are the pieces to the benchmark: 1. Three Scenes from your Personal Reading History First, it is your job to go into the past and share three scenes from your development as a reader. These stories can be stories of triumph or struggle--and should probably be some combination of both. Here are some prompts to help you identify important scenes from your life: - When do you first remember reading? How did it feel? - What’s the first book you read? Why was that important to you? - How is reading treated in your house? Does your approach to reading “match” what your family does? - How is reading treated by your friends? Does your approach to reading “match” what they do? - How do you feel about reading in school? Is there a teacher who was made reading amazing, or awful? How did they do that? - How do you feel about choosing a book vs. assigned reading? How have these options influenced your reading in school vs. in your free time? - How do you feel compared to other readers? (As a teacher, I don’t want you to compare yourself to anybody, but I know this happens.) - Have you ever been labeled a “struggling” reader? How about an “advanced” reader? What did this do to your reading? - What’s the last book that you read that you enjoyed? What’s been going on with your reading since then? - What do you read in secret? Why has that been a secret (until now)? - Any other key moments where you saw a development or shift in your mindset about reading. 2. Eight Annotations for your Independent Reading Book Next, it is your job to illustrate your current skills as a reader by describing what your brain does while you read. Pick a few pages from a book you’ve read during the Independent Reading Unit, and create written annotations in eight different ways. Annotations could be as short as a couple of sentences, or as long as a couple of paragraphs, or even a drawing or visual annotation -- it depends on what you’re writing about. It just needs to be thorough, and that means explaining WHY this annotation is relevant to understanding the book. Here’s a PARTIAL list of what you could annotate: o Identify and apply the meaning of new vocabulary. What does that new word mean, how did you figure it out? Why is this word relevant to the book? o Identify and apply word recognition skills What unusual word did you already know, and how did you know it? Why is this word relevant to the book? o Make inferences and conclusions about what’s happening in the text Refer to the text on the page, previous parts of the book, and your own knowledge. How do you know what you know? o Identify and explain main ideas and relevant details What’s going on in the book? Why does it matter? o Identify, describe, and analyze genre of text What qualifies this book as historical fiction, fantasy, mystery, politics, how-to, etc.? Has to be more than just the title! o Interpret, compare, describe, analyze, and evaluate components of fiction and literary nonfiction For example: Character, Setting, Plot, Theme, Tone, Symbol, Mood, Symbolism. More types available on the literary devices website. o Make connections between texts. What books, movies, TV shows, other texts relate to this book? How does that enrich your understanding? o Identify, interpret, describe, and analyze figurative language and literary structures in fiction and nonfiction: For Example: Personification, Simile, Metaphor, Hyperbole, Satire, Imagery, Foreshadow, Flashback, Irony. More types available on the literary devices website. o Identify, interpret, describe, and analyze the point of view and effectiveness of the point of view used in the text. First, second, or third person? Maybe a combination of both? How do you know, and how does it influence the reader? o Interpret, describe, and analyze the characteristics and uses of facts and opinions in the text. If it’s fictional, you can analyze the feelings and opinions of the characters. If it’s non-fiction, focus on the text itself and what it’s presenting. o Identify, compare, explain, interpret, describe, and analyze how text organization influences the text. Look at the structure of the chapters, each section, different categories, or other organizational methods. How do they help the reader understand what’s going on? 3. Concluding Reflection Lastly, you will need some closing reflection on everything you have done. By doing this project, what deep understandings have you gained about your attitude and approach towards reading? What did you learn that you didn’t know before? And what skills do you need to work on in the future? Where do you think our reading history is going? Project Format: Prezi Once you have done all of the brainstorming and writing necessary for this project, you will transfer the necessary pieces over to a dynamic Prezi presentation. The final work should include images of the independent reading book you are annotating -- Take a photo of the page(s) you will be working with, or get pages scanned in class by Ms. Pahomov starting the week of 1/21. The final Prezi should have at least 13 clearly separate “items” in the presentation: - 3 scenes from your history - 8 annotations - 2 points of reflection. Having this minimum would just “meet expectations” for the project (assuming the items were all good.) You are strongly encouraged to turn these into multiple items as you see fit. Keep in mind, also, that the items should be more than just writing -please include images, audio, and even video as you see fit. Once the brainstorming is done, we will take time in class to look at quality Prezi production. Timeline Monday 1/14 - Review project instructions, ask questions, look at brainstormed reading histories Friday 1/18 - Work on Annotations. Time to scan book pages for your Prezi. Tuesday 1/22 - Annotations DUE (in written format on moodle). Look at quality Prezis in class. Thursday 1/24 - Work on Prezis Friday 1/25 - Finish Draft + Peer Review (second half of class) Monday 1/29 - Presentation Day! All prezis are displayed on student computers, and students take a gallery walk through the classroom, reading and giving feedback on the final works. Sample Reading History Scene I come from an extremely text-rich environment. In the house where I grew up, one of the three bedrooms had been converted into a study with a wall of bookshelves. We went to the library or the bookstore whenever I wanted. We subscribed to three newspapers and a number of magazines and journals. Reading was a very natural, integrated activity at my house. Eventually I realized it was this immersion that gave me an edge in English classes at school. At time, though, it seemed like nothing extraordinary. I started reading The New Yorker for the cartoons when I was a kid--not because somebody told me it was a cultured thing to do, but simply because it was sitting on the coffee table. Sample Annotation See the Sample Prezi I made: http://prezi.com/wsfd58x7rdh9/improved-reading-history/?utm_source=preziview&utm_medium=ending-bar&utm_content=Title-link&utm_campaign=ending-bar-tryout