Reading Response Journals

I have been in school the last two years getting my Master’s degree.  Here in Kentucky, you have to have your Master’s within ten years of your initial certification.  I am about to start year five of teaching and I am almost finished with school.  Finally!

Last semester, I began working on a teacher inquiry project on reading response journals.  I have always had my students respond while reading, but I have yet to come up with a consistent format that I feel really works for my students.  This upcoming year, I plan on implementing reading response journals in my second grade classroom to see if there is any significant impact on their reading comprehension.  I want the journals to be a way for students to take ownership of their reading  I would like for the journals to be a place for them to practice skills and strategies we have learned in class, but also allow them to respond to the text as they feel appropriate.  It has been hard figuring out a way to give up all control, but still make them structured enough to be effective.

Here’s where I need your help!  How do you use reading response journals in your classroom?  Or how do you allow students to respond to their reading?  I have seen lots of great ideas for implementing journals including using a double entry journal, diary-style writing, and response prompts.  I am interested in learning about the response types that you have found work well for your classroom.  So share!

Also, how do you assess your students’ learning through response journals?  I am thinking about using a rubric to score their weekly journal entries.  I was going to focus on the quality of the response.  For example, do they make connections to the text?  Do they use textual evidence to support their response?  Let me know how you assess your reading response journals.

I will be finishing up the project this fall with my new set of second graders.  I’ll keep you all posted along the way about how their comprehension was affected by the reading response journals!

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Here it is – my brand new teacher blog!  I have been a huge fan of other teaching blogs and have found it to be a wonderful way to share ideas and resources, reflect on teaching and learning, and connect with others who love teaching.

I am going to start my second year of teaching second grade in the fall.  Last year around this time, I was a little apprehensive about moving down to second after being in third for so long, but I loved every second of teaching second grade last year and I can’t wait to start this year.  

In addition to teaching second grade, I am also teaching in my district’s Summer Literacy Boost starting next week with upcoming first and second graders.  This is my second year teaching in the program.  Last year, I worked with upcoming second graders and watched them make huge progress in the few short weeks I had them.  I am more than happy to be working with future first graders this year!  I will be working with another classroom teacher, as well as a reading recovery teacher.

I’ll be sharing some of my experiences with the Summer Literacy Boost here.  Stay tuned!