Reading is a tricky skill. Responding to reading is even trickier, and crafting a rich reader's response is the top layer on the tricky reading skills cake. Reader's response journaling is an extremely powerful tool in reading instruction. Reader's response entries allow students to show off their skills and thinking through their texts. Reader's response entries also allow teachers to discuss and evaluate our kiddo's level of understanding in reading skills to reteach, push, and ultimately help them make massive gains in reading. Reader's responses are an amazing strategy, but how do we teach our students to craft them? How can we teach students to show off their thinking and write powerful reader’s response entries that make them proud? Read more to explore my top three tips for teaching strong readers response entries now!
Tip #1 in The 3 Top Tips for Teaching Strong Readers Response Entries: Teach How to Respond to Reading
If you want to improve the reader's response entries that your students write, then you need to explicitly teach how to craft a reading response. Start by using your favorite mentor text, pick a reader's response question or skill to respond to, and get to work! Active model a fantastic reader's response journal example for your students. Take your time and don’t skip a single step! Start by discussing what you are thinking before you write so your students can hear how strong readers engage their minds while reading. Then show how to format your reader's response on an anchor chart or whiteboard. Finally, show students how to use text evidence to support their thinking and correctly cite that evidence.
Once your active modeling is complete, allow time to discuss the process with your students. Explain the importance of each step and how strong reader's response journaling will make them better readers this year. After that, send students back to their working spaces to copy the reader's response example that you just created. This is crucial! For your students to grow as readers and in their reading responses, they need to have tools at their disposal that will help them get the job done well. You cannot have a one-and-done reader's response lesson and poof! expect to have stellar reader’s response entries like magic. Actively reading and writing about reading is hard work! Students will work at this reader's response skill over time, like strengthening a muscle. To strengthen this muscle, students must-have resources and tools to refer to. Make sure students glue this class-created reader's response exemplar into their reader's response notebooks. This will serve as a mini anchor chart and reference for them as they continue to improve their reader's response skills.
Tip #2 in The 3 Top Tips for Teaching Strong Readers Response Entries: Use Question Starters.
Now that you have actively modeled a strong reader's response for your students, it is time for them to practice. However, we don’t want to toss our kiddos into the deep end of the pool when they have only dipped their toes in and still have floaties on their arms. In order to help students progress in their reader's response journaling, we need to give them baby steps to success. Instead of expecting students to instantly begin reading and responding like active readers, take a step back and give them reader's response prompts and graphic organizers. These prompts and reading graphic organizers will serve as a starting point and allow their heavy lifting and thinking to be done in crafting their strong reader's response. I provide my students with reader's response question starters and graphic organizers for every targeted reading skill that they will write about this year. For example, if they are writing a reader's response about our new targeted reading skill of inference, I provide them with question starters like, “When I read ___ I can infer ____. I know this because ____.” Additionally, they have reading graphic organizers to reach targeted reading skills available to them inside of their reader's response notebooks. Simply providing a starting point for students through graphic organizers or prompts helps them to springboard their ideas onto their papers and highlight their thinking in their reader's response. If you want to explore more about how I teach inference, click THIS LINK to read my blog post now.
Tip #3 in The 3 Top Tips for Teaching Strong Readers Response Entries: Give Them Easy Access to Reading Tools.
Do you remember earlier on in this blog post when we discussed the importance of your students saving and using the reader's response exemplar? This ease of access to tools can not stop there! If you want your students to demonstrate their depth and understanding of characters or plot then give them the tools to remember your mini-lesson and build off of it. Provide your students with mini anchor charts that they can keep inside of their reader's response notebooks. This is the most powerful tool you can give your students when helping them grow as active readers and craft powerful readers response entries. For example, let’s pretend that my student Sonya is reading the book The Wild Robot and I ask her to do a reading response about the main character Roz. Without the proper tools, I am expecting her to recall character trait lessons and skills, mentally decide what to write a reader's response about, find text evidence, cite, and format it all correctly. That is a lot for an elementary student to do independently. Without the proper support in place, Sonya may feel overwhelmed, defeated, and produce a reader's response that does not accurately display her knowledge of character traits. However, when Sonya is given a reference point and prompts to get her started, light bulb moments burst and flash. She can focus on building on her character trait knowledge instead of just trying to recall the base level lesson and reproduce a reader's response at the introductory level. Deep thinking is what we are aiming for and excitement around reading. Mini anchor charts help our students feel confident in their reader's responses and proud of their work. When our kiddos are proud of what they create, they will always work harder than we expect them to and learn even more.
I hope you enjoyed reading my top three tips for teaching strong readers response skills. If
you are looking for more tips to help your students capture light bulb moments in reading, then CLICK HERE to read my blog post about targeted reading skills now!
Are you looking for the reader's response notebooks that I use and love so much? CLICK THIS LINK to explore my favorite reader's response notebooks now!
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