Thor's Day! "Looking" at Reading in a New Way

It's Thor's Day! 

For those of you who didn't know this little fact, the Thursday, as we know it, evolved from it's namesake, Thor. Thus, a Eureka! moment! (Doesn't the strange spelling make sense now?)

On Thursdays I'll post a peek into the reading lessons and strategies I'm currently using in my classrooms...

At the beginning of the year, a big focus for me is how I will be working with my small groups/RTI class period. These are the students that WANT to read fluently, WANT to understand what it is that makes these books so good, and WANT to be independent readers but for one reason or another, they struggle.

This year, I'm starting with a group of 11-12 students. After conducting one-to-one reading interviews with all the students, I quickly realized that most of them struggle to make that "mini-movie" in their minds as they read. The ability to visualize a text well isn't an instinctual skill; it has to be taught. After I realized this was our greatest need, I decided it was the skill to focus on first.

To help my struggling readers, I borrowed and "leveled-up" (my term for taking what seems to be a lower/middle grade strategy and modifying it for junior high students) an idea I found through my pinterest boards. The original idea can be found here, on the blog, One Extra Degree.

In the past, I've used mini-notebooks with an entire class of students as we read Pictures of Hollis Woods by Patricia Reilly Giff. It's the perfect book for middle-grade classrooms to use to practice visualization. The story has great places to stop and reflect on that are actually part of the plot. In the story, Hollis keeps her own sketch book and draws what she feels and interprets around her. I let the students draw what they THOUGHT Hollis's pictures looked like. Then we compared them to the images in the book.

For my RTI group, I had a stash of donated mini-notebooks. First, I printed out directions similar to the Snapshot page found on Amanda's website. I sized these to fit perfectly at the front of the notebook. This first week, I needed the students to begin working so that I could continue to assess individual needs and establish other skill practices. The students have been creating their own "snapshots" each day this week and are really finding it to be helpful.

Next week, we're going to add the covers to the notebooks. For now, I've included an image of my journal's sample cover.