Todays blog post will just be the special sections since I missed these in my last longer post. Next time I will do a post about the language of ELA and Schoolwide, so parents can better understand the jargon of our classroom.

Strategy of the Week
Book Logs
Book logs are simply a “during reading strategy” to help students prepare to discuss their book club books. Students complete tasks which ask them to think about various story elements. After completing these tasks, the student are more well prepared to have discussions with their peers. Below are my directions and some student work samples from a variety of grade levels.

Student Voices of the Week
Disclaimer…The students’ posts were not written for publication, so their grammar, spelling and sentence structure are in rough draft form. My purpose is to share their unedited thoughts.








What I’m Reading
Professionally, I am reading all of the book club books and several of our mentor texts. One mentor text is called The Mostly True Adventures of Homer P. Figg by Rodman Philbrick who wrote Freak the MIghty. This is a historical fiction book with a humorous tone and the 7th and 8th graders will read it for the purpose of reviewing and discussing the effects of historical settings on fiction, conflict, and theme. The book also teaches about what life was like during the Civil War. Your children have found it interesting and engaging. Another mentor text we have been reading is called The Circuit by Francisco Jimenez. This text belongs to the sub genre of realistic fiction, and it is about the challenges of life for a family who has immigrated from Mexico to California to work as farmers.

Personally I am reading a book for my own book club called The Woman in Cabin 10 by Ruth Ware. I am very early in the plot but the narrator seems a bit off balance which should make for a great story. It is about a travel writer who goes on a luxury cruise to write about it and witnesses a murder.