THINKING about READING

Can you tell that school has started?  It takes me two months of hard work to get to the point where I can take a breath! Phew!

I want to start this post by sharing with you how AMAZING my group of sixth graders are this year! They have been such good sports about my taking pictures of them all the time for my blog and Masters Classes and their parents have been awesome for letting me use their images.

Last week, we experienced one of the greatest Reading Comprehension activities I've ever used!  We've been discussing that the word "metacognition" means "thinking about thinking".  We've also talked about how "Real Reading" occurs when you actually THINK about what you read.  Thinking could be making connections or predictions, visualizing characters or events in the story, etc.

To practice, I made a quick, simple THOUGHT BUBBLE out of poster board and cut out a hole for a face.  Students worked in pairs to read a few chapters from our whole-class novel.  I instructed the students to take turns providing the TEXT (reading aloud from the novel) and providing the THOUGHTS (using the bubble to interrupt their partner and share their thoughts).

Students were paying such good attention to what they read! I was amazed at the conversations started around the room. "Oh! This reminds me of this time my family went camping last summer..." "That character kind of reminds me of Ebenezer Scrooge...Did you see that Muppet Movie?" "I wonder if she really will run away from home. I've never done that. I think I'd be too scared. Where do you even go when you run away?"

Even when my students are not using their Thought Bubbles, they interrupt their reading with thinking! Which I think is just great.