Writing About Reading:

Using Reading Goals and Questioning to Support Student Notebooks

Kristen Flynn and Ashley Hefferon

What are reading goals?

• Specific strategies that students work on as they read
• These strategies align with a specific skill that a student needs support on
• These strategies typically focus on the plot and setting or understanding characters
• Reading strategies/skills become more complex as students grow in their comprehension/reading level

Examples of Reading Goals

Plot/ Setting

• tracking how the big problem is complicated
• tracking flashbacks/foreshadowing/ changes in setting

Character

• tracking the character’s traits/feelings
• tracking how the secondary character impacts the main character

How will my student know what to do?

• Students will learn the strategy in a small group with their teacher- they will typically practice with a book they already know!
• The group will practice the strategy in a chapter book with frequent check-ins with teacher
• Students will be able to practice the strategy independently in a new book

Text Evidence

How can you motivate your reader to incorporate text evidence into their jots?

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• Challenging the reader to go back and work as a detective to find text evidence
• Explain how important it is to include text evidence in their jots, and how it makes their responses that much stronger �
• Give them sentence starters such as “In the text..”, or “In chapter 3…”

Text Complexities

What are text complexities?

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• The level of difficulty in reading and understanding a text. The text complexities at a specific reading level are based on a series of factors:

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-The readability of the text

-The structure of the text

-The conventionality and clarity of the language

-The knowledge demands of the text

Examples:

Prompts to discuss with your reader to promote conversation:

• What is the most important thing that happened in this chapter related to the BIG PROBLEM?
• What character traits or feelings does your character show in this chapter?
• How is your character changing from the beginning to the middle of the story?
• What attempts is the main character in your book making to get what they want or solve the problem?
• What internal and external conflicts is your character facing at this time?
• How do the secondary characters' actions affect the main character?

What should your child's’ notebook work look like?

Questions?