InstaDigest: April 14-April 25

What we did + what it looked like

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Someday I will learn my lesson and plan a writing unit for one prep while I plan a reading unit for the other. Every year, I make this vow. Every year, I fail.

And so here we are, both preps in a reading unit — The Outsiders in 7th and Lord of the Flies in 8th. Some thoughts of note:

• You’ll notice my students are still doing independent reading every day (first 10 minutes of class) while they also read a whole-class novel. I manage this two ways: first — I make class time for both. (We give our time to what we value. If it’s valuable, we need to make time for it during class.)

  Second — I reduce the amount of independent reading I expect from each student. Typically, I require two hours of independent reading per 7-day class rotation. I give students about half of this during class time, and the other half is the only “homework” I assign. However, during a whole-class novel study, I stop requiring the out-of-class portion. (Here’s the crazy thing that happened this week when I checked in on their independent reading: they are reading MORE than they were before! Why?! How?!)

• I’ve found a pretty nice flow you might want to steal. I assign reading in little chunks. On the day the reading is due, students write a reading response (a la Marilyn Pryle). They then have a discussion based on their annotations and reading responses — that way, everyone comes into the conversation with at least one fully formed thought to share. Then, on the other days, I teach a reading strategy and give them reading and annotating time.

• Periodically, I am ending class (usually the days they have the bigger chunk of reading time) with an exit ticket that asks for students metacognition about how and why they are reading the way that they are. I’ll share it with you below. It’s providing me with interesting insight, but also building students’ flexibility and awareness of different reading modes.

What We Did

What It Looked Like

Here’s the exit ticket I’m using to end reading days in class. It goes with the four modes of reading I shared with you last time.

Here’s my 8th grade Lord of the Flies “Learning Wall”. It’s not interactive a la Jess Vance, but I am using it to add the big ideas being discussed in our Harknesses after each chunk of chapters. This way, each class gets to see what all the other sections are also discussing. I think the tangible nature of the board makes us all feel like we are really engaged in an important intellectual project together.

I’ve spent a lot of time this year thinking about the exposition of a text and how that’s typically where my students get hung up (and drop books). I knew that the number of characters in The Outsiders would be an obstacle for my seventh graders if I didn’t work intentionally to help them. I also knew that chapter one would be challenging for them due to the number of dense character-description passages. So, I created a poster for each character described in chapter one and hung them up down the hallway. We practiced close reading and annotation skills together. I was impressed by their 7th-grade insight!

Scenes from reading The Outsiders

We also bedazzled our books like TikTokers.

Parent communication for these units!