Wednesday, July 29, 2015

Workshop Wednesday - Talk Back to Books




Howdy y'all,
It's Gary from ScrappyGuy Designs.

Time certainly does fly when you are on Summer Break.  My responsibilities for the new school year will begin THIS FRIDAY! Our grade level is meeting for some planning time before we go back to Preplanning on Monday. I tried and tried and tried to convince my team to meet at the beach, but they weren't biting.

As I get ready to head back I'm thinking about how different this year is going to be especially since my BBB Jessica Ivey, more affectionately known as Jivey, will not be amongst us. She is going whole hog on this TpT thing and I wish her all the luck in the world. To pay homage to her greatness I'm stealing an idea she's posted on her blog before to share with you. Here's her post:

Jivey Talks Back to Books

Here's a picture of these great Talk Back to Books bookmarks that I use every year with  my students.



You can pick this up here.

I print these out on heavy cardstock and then cut apart to give to each student. I have them all come to group and read aloud a favorite book such as Clark the Shark. I hand out sticky notes after I read a few pages and ask them to fill it out this way:

Name Date Time
T - Title of book
A - Author of book
G - Genre of book

Then I pose a question for them to respond to on their sticky notes. Since the first question on the Talk Back to Books is "I'm thinking..." I usually go with that one. Students can write about the thoughts the book has already provoked for them.

I have them write at least two more stickies about the book (their choice) by the time we finish the read aloud. Then they take all three of the stickies and turn them into a Response on the book overall. This is a short one at the beginning of the year, usually just a paragraph. But I ask that they mention the three ideas they thought about while we were reading.

As we do more and more of these interactions the students will hopefully begin to internalize these questions and work them into their responses throughout the year.

This bookmark is a win-win in my eyes. I get to gauge what they are capable of in their writing and they get to learn the basics of a good response and how to think about books as they read.

I hope you find this useful!