What my students do when they've finished a whole-class novel early...
This week, my students are finishing up a whole-class novel + I’m running into that classic conundrum of students finishing “early”.
What I really want is for those early finishers to continue to practice the skills we’ve been honing in this unit:
Analyzing characters
Interpreting themes
Finding text evidence to support the above
So, I’ve made a little choice board — my favorite way to help students extend their thinking and their practice in a low-key way if they have finished before the rest of the group.
The choice board provides enough options that no one is left with “nothing” to do, but the options are diverse enough and friendly enough that everyone can find something that they want to work on to continue their thinking — either about the novel they have just finished (in this case, Kelly Barnhill’s The Girl Who Drank the Moon) or by applying the strategies from this unit to a different text (taking it into their independent reading).
I ask “finished” students to choose one activity from the choice board for each class period. Once they finish this activity, they are truly free.
On Saturday, I’m sharing more from this unit with community members, including 11 reading strategies that move readers from identifying characters to analyzing characters to interpreting themes!
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