Inner Conversations

Last week, our reading strategy was following your inner conversation by leaving tracks. We discussed the importance of thinking about their reading and then writing those thoughts down (leaving tracks). Leaving tracks during reading was compared to animals leaving tracks in the snow. Even though the animal may be gone, you can tell what animal was there by looking at the tracks. In reading, we write notes to track our thinking and after we are finished we can remember what we read by reading the notes. Therefore, we "leave tracks" of our thinking.

Throughout the week, we did read alouds, partner reading, and independent reading where the students practiced leaving tracks. On Friday, we did a culminating activity. I read the book Mufaro's Beautiful Daughters by John Steptoe. While I read, they left tracks of their thinking in their reading notebooks. After we finished, my scholars discussed the book in small groups. To work on conversational skills we use sentence starters. Our sentence starters for the week were I think, I believe, In my opinion, I wonder, I agree because, and I disagree because. (I love hearing children using these sentence starters.) After the discussions, my scholars created thought bubbles with their thoughts about the book. These were the track they wrote while I was reading the book. They then drew a self portrait and created a poster with the thought bubble coming from their self portrait. They turned out great!

Here are pictures of some of them.

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