This product assists teachers and students with retell, literacy, comprehension, retention, reading for meaning, discussion groups, clarification, main idea, cause and effect, written response, vocabulary, character development, and reading logs.
My literature log can be used in all elementary and junior high reading classes. Each page consists of four parts:
A small section in which to record the story/chapter’s title, the date it was read, and the number of pages read on that day.
A small section in which students can record up to four vocabulary words they can add to a personal dictionary. Teachers can use these words or combine them with words selected by other students for vocabulary building or phonics lessons.
This section allows students to record their reactions to events or characters in the story. They do so by copying and completing sentence starters such as “I was confused by . . .”, “I liked the way . . .”, and “I wonder why . . .”. Teachers can use these statements to inform one-to-one reading conferences, organize discussion groups, or plan mini-lessons as part of a readers’ workshop.
The final activity requires students to select and write complete sentence/paragraph responses to a particular question about the story. These questions involve such story elements as character comparisons, summarizing the plot, describing the setting, and predicting future events, among others. While these responses can be self contained assessments of a student’s comprehension, they can also be used by the teacher to plan instruction in the same way that the reaction statements in section 3 were used.
My literature log is an open ended teaching device that can be used with any book above an emergent reading level. The number of pages provided in the log is at the teacher’s discretion. Students can complete one log and independently start a new one. Logs can also be designed to match the number of chapters in a book or the number of days students are given to finish reading it. Once students understand how to use the log, repetitive directions are unnecessary, saving that time for instruction.