Realistic Fiction Reading - Starts Today!

The students are finally bringing home their realistic fiction book they selected to read at home.  This is an activity I have mentioned before in my blog, but we always seem to be too busy or have snow days that we run out of time.  Not today!  We are ready and the students each have one they are to be reading at home!

What  I would like them to do (and I have explained this to them), is to make a blog post on their student blog pages each week about their book. We are currently studying realistic fiction in writing and have discussed how realistic fiction can take place at present time, has real events that could happen but are not real characters, has a problem and solution, as well as determined character traits.  Writing and reading go hand in hand so we are going to try and connect our writing to reading realistic fiction books.

I am not assigning a certain number of pages to be read each week or anything, but I would like the students to have their book done by middle of February.  No one has a really long book so this should be feasible.  In order to respond each week, students need to be reading.  In order to get the book done though, students need to read more than 10 minutes one night a week.  I told the students I would love to see students reading EVERY NIGHT, but I realize some nights things come up.  Do the best you can to read every night, but maybe miss a night if life is busy.

Here is what I need from the students by Friday of this week (February 3rd):
     1.  Tell the title and author of your book and write a summary about what you have read thus far.  Remember the "WIN" strategy for summarizing. (W- who and what, I-important information, and N-few number of words.)
     2.  How would you describe the main character thus far?  Why?  What has he/she done to make you think that?  Try to come up with two or more ways to describe the main character and tell what he/she has done in the book to make you feel that way.
     3.  How do you know this is realistic fiction?  Tell us how you know.
     4.  Optional:  If you are far enough in your book, what is the main problem?  Tell us about it and predict how you think it will be solved.  If you know, tell us what the resolution was.
     5.  What do you think of your book so far?  Are you enjoying it?  Why or why not?

If your child finishes his/her book very quickly and does a post about it, please have them return their book and I will give them another one to read at home.

I have also told the students that if they do not have a computer at home, they can do their response post at school.  It is their responsibility to talk to me and let me know when they want to work on it though.

I think this will be a great way to encourage students to read more at home as well as connect our reading and writing together.  The students are very excited about it and have selected some wonderful books to read!  Students may also use this time reading towards their minutes for Book-It.  (January calendars are due Wednesday or Thursday of this week.)

I look forward to reading their first post about their books this Friday!