Reading- as recommended in WTM

[plain jane]

Now that I've gone back and reread most of the WTM and not just the recommendations like I used to do when it was the library's copy ;) I'm realizing that I have not been requiring dd to keep a reading notebook. I really like the idea but am not sure how to implement this. I'd love to hear what has worked for you.

 

Currently, I require dd to do 45-60min of assigned reading in either history (mostly) and science. She also is required to do an additional 30-45 minutes of free reading from a quality novel (no comic books or fluff extraordinaire) each day. When her reading is for science, I do make her write 8(ish) sentences on what she read that day and illustrate. I have not been requiring this for her history and free readings, although it has always been in the back of my mind that I *should* do something more with those. Now that I've read WTM again, I want to start this up in the fall.

 

So, if, dd were to read a chapter book for history, say for example, Son of Charlemagne, and also read The Secret of Nimh at the same time, how would I go about having her complete her reading notebook(s)? Would I have her write a brief synopsis at the end of each chapter and illustrate it? How much do I require? Would I be better to have her fill out some sort of book report form (Evan Moor, perhaps)??

 

Of course, I would not do this for every book she reads as I'm sure that would kill her love of reading, but I have been feeling that I need to require more response to literature from her for quite some time. I do not know if she would be able to give a synopsis of the entire book without a great deal of guidance from me (who in turn would need some guidance as to what should be included:tongue_smilie:).

 

I'm all ears. Tell me how you reading "the WTM way" looks like in your home. I should add that dd will be in grade 3.

Edited May 30, 2009 by plain jane

[freeindeed]

:lurk5:

[whitestavern]

:lurk5:

 

I'm curious as well since I've just been reading my new WTM! Also, if you have your child write about the book, how do you know if their write up is any good unless you read the book as well? My dd is a voracious reader and I couldn't possibly keep up with her reading. She does often (on her own) talk about the book she's reading.

[Coffeetime]

My understanding from WTM is that you wouldn't have them do any notebooking on their free reading, but only on structured reading (history/science).

I've been planning on beginning to implement this next year (also 3rd grade)-- but I too am concerned about it making my son hate reading. He's a really good reader, but he's a busy boy and it's not really something he chooses to do unless I schedule it in- and I KNOW he will hate doing the notebook pages. :(

So I guess I'm curious how other's do it too- especially with busy 7-8 year old boys! :P I wonder if it would hurt to hold off on it until 4th grade....??

[Nan in Mass]

I managed not to kill their love of reading, and yet we did have a record of what they read. It was sort of a compromise. They had fun books that they read on their own. Mostly I ignored those. They also had literature books that they were reading for me (TWTM literature list). We discussed those (if we had time). Then, depending on how much other writing they were doing, they either wrote out the title and drew a picture, or they wrote a book report. They learned to write a book report Writing Strands and to draw from Draw Squad. We did that until high school. GRIN Some books were still just a title and a picture, even in 8th grade. I was determined that mine wouldn't stop drawing and this was one way that I could encourage it easily. In 8th grade, the reading section of my son's notebook had pictures and titles, pictures and titles and two sentences in French for books read in French, and proper book reports. I didn't correct the book reports, for the most part, and they began to vary in form as my children moved through the Writing Strands program and learned to do other sorts of papers about books.

HTH

-Nan

[Lovedtodeath]

My understanding from WTM is that you wouldn't have them do any notebooking on their free reading, but only on structured reading (history/science).

I've been planning on beginning to implement this next year (also 3rd grade)-- but I too am concerned about it making my son hate reading. He's a really good reader, but he's a busy boy and it's not really something he chooses to do unless I schedule it in- and I KNOW he will hate doing the notebook pages. :(

So I guess I'm curious how other's do it too- especially with busy 7-8 year old boys! :P I wonder if it would hurt to hold off on it until 4th grade....??

You can start a notebook. Have him tell you about the book. You choose a couple of things to write down (Or if he is doing really well with summarizing and narrating, then you might have him choose the main points.) and correct the grammar on, then have him copy it. He can choose to paste copies of the cover or pictures or draw something if he wants. At that age, I would do this at the most. I might just have him read back what I wrote and not bother making him copy it. It would be good to start slow like this, rather than hold off and require a long book report later.

 

You might also go over the recommendations in WWE to see how much writing and summarizing to expect for each level. You might be surprised. I believe PHP has samples on their website that explain each level.

 

HTH

[purplemama]

We have not done any notebooking for any reading yet. My ds MAY start over the summer as I think he needs the writing practice.

 

As everyone will say on these boards, NO ONE does everything by the book. You just pick and choose what fits your child and their particular situation. Don;t feel like it is something you have to do. And I would wait until your child is a good enough writer to bother.

 

Jennifer

[Lovedtodeath]

As everyone will say on these boards, NO ONE does everything by the book. You just pick and choose what fits your child and their particular situation. Don't feel like it is something you have to do.

 

Good point! :iagree:We have only made pages on our very favorite books, to rememer the good time we had reading them.

[plain jane]

We have not done any notebooking for any reading yet. My ds MAY start over the summer as I think he needs the writing practice.

 

As everyone will say on these boards, NO ONE does everything by the book. You just pick and choose what fits your child and their particular situation. Don;t feel like it is something you have to do. And I would wait until your child is a good enough writer to bother.

 

Jennifer

 

 

While I certainly don't feel like I have to do everything in the book, I'm looking for suggestions and to hear what has worked for those who have done this. :)

 

My dd is a good writer but I'm still a bit unclear as to whether she should be writing about the whole book (overwhelming to sort through the information as some books are very long) or per chapter (again, overwhelming because that's a lot of writing per book):001_huh:.

 

Still looking for ideas if anyone here does this for literature and history readings. :) I know someone on this site must. :tongue_smilie:

[Lovedtodeath]

Well, I have no experience for grade 3. :) For My Father's Dragon I had DD pick her favorite chapter. We reread it, wrote a narration and drew a picture. That would be harder for a more difficult book.

 

I think a reading notebook can be fun. The main reason for the notebooks, IMO is so that DD can look at it later and remember what we did.

[phathui5]

We're finishing up 3rd grade with ds1 and didn't do any notebooking or book reports about reading. We talk about the books we read together and the ones he's read, but I hated stuff like that in school. I want him to enjoy reading on its own.

[Kim in SouthGa]

I just started requiring reading summaries from literature selections this past year for my two oldest (4th dd and 7th ds). For my son who will be in 3rd grade next year, I can just tell he is not ready. He already hates to read, so I don't want to make it any harder. For his history and science notebooks, we'll draw (science) or find a pic on the internet (history) and have him narrate a few sentences to me. Hopefully by the time we get back from Christmas break, he'll be able to write them on his own. I probably won't start a reading notebook (literature) for him until 5th grade. By the way, even though we waited very late to do this with my other two, they have done great. I don't require them to do every book we read, and I wrote the requirements in the front cover of their notebook: title, author, setting (where, when), main characters, several sentences about the plot, and their opinion. Even though I just require 5 sentences from them, my oldest usually writes a whole page. I'm working on getting that opinion more developed right now-something more than I liked this book because it was cool!:glare:

We will be doing history and science on different days (MW/TR) so I plan to have him do his history narration on Monday and his science narration on Thursday. We may randomly throw in a book summary if he happens to finish a book on one of those off days.

[Mom-ninja.]

I'm still trying to just get my ds reading fluently! It's hard enough for him to just read right now. I figure WWE is giving him practice with learning to summarize and comprehension at this point.

[Classicalmomto4]

I started this last year for my 7th grader and 3rd grader. They were each required to write a summary of all required literature reading. The third grader also drew a picture. I had an outline that I gave the oldest that explained what I wanted to be included in this summary.

 

I also required this for historical fiction and biography books that we read to correlate with SOTW3. Again, for the seventh grader I created an outline that showed the information to include. For the third grader, I created more of a form that asked several questions about either the biography or the historical fiction book. I then bound all of these forms together at the beginning of the year, so we would have a compilation of what we did at the end of the year.

 

My only problem was that I got tired and burned out and wasn't so good on following up with this in the middle of the year!

[yvonne]

Not exactly what you're looking for, but it might give you some ideas....

 

We're reading Colum's The Children's Homer aloud. To keep the characters and events straight, I've been reading them a chapter. Then, I ask them to tell me in two to four sentences or so the most important things that happened in that chapter. I write them down and read it back to them to be sure we've got the chapter covered. It's kind of a running list of chapter summaries on a piece of notebook paper. We all enjoy looking back and reading over it and it's giving them a great skeleton for understanding the Iliad & Odyssey.

 

Hm. Or maybe this is what is meant by keeping a "reading notebook." I'm not sure?

 

It recently struck me that it's very similar to what SWB suggests doing in the WEM, though much simplified, obviously. I think I'm going to try it again with our next read aloud because I can see where it could morph into a truly useful tool for my children as they move into higher levels of lit. study.

 

Just an idea!

yvonne

[Annabel Lee]

Yvonne, I like that idea! Nice 'n' simple, yet effective.

 

From what I understand of TWTM, and it's been awhile since I've read those notebooking portions, serious notebooking is only required for assigned reading. Even then, not for *every* single thing that's read for history and science. I think if there isn't much other writing scheduled in the day, esp. for that subject, it would be OK to ask for a notebook page on a book or section of a book.

[Mom-ninja.]

Not exactly what you're looking for, but it might give you some ideas....

 

We're reading Colum's The Children's Homer aloud. To keep the characters and events straight, I've been reading them a chapter. Then, I ask them to tell me in two to four sentences or so the most important things that happened in that chapter. I write them down and read it back to them to be sure we've got the chapter covered. It's kind of a running list of chapter summaries on a piece of notebook paper. We all enjoy looking back and reading over it and it's giving them a great skeleton for understanding the Iliad & Odyssey.

 

Hm. Or maybe this is what is meant by keeping a "reading notebook." I'm not sure?

 

It recently struck me that it's very similar to what SWB suggests doing in the WEM, though much simplified, obviously. I think I'm going to try it again with our next read aloud because I can see where it could morph into a truly useful tool for my children as they move into higher levels of lit. study.

 

Just an idea!

yvonne

 

 

This is great

[Strawberry Queen]

Well, I really meant to do the notebooking this year but I couldn't get into a groove of making it happen. What I am going to do for 4th grade is make dd write a paragraph about one of her assigned lit. books. I'm thinking that having some guidelines would be helpful, and possibly something slightly different for each book.These are just off the top of my head:

 

- describe the setting

-describe the main character

-retell the most exciting event

-describe the 'bad' character and why he/she's bad (if applicable)

-what is the problem that the character faces and how is it solved?

-draw a map of the characters' journey with important places and events labeled

-illustrate an interesting event and write caption (for a busy writing week)

 

Of course these are just my ideas right now-no practice;). I will make my dd in 2nd draw and write a caption to get in the habit of reporting on some of the books she reads.

HTH

[wildflower]

Not sure if this helps at all & maybe I am confused-

Is the WTM writing journal the same as the journal for WEM (which I am personally working in now).

The journal in WEM is simply jotting down characters on the left hand page and the chapter and one sentence on the right hand page for the first reading.

 

I seem to remember there was a certain breakdown of what was to be expected by grade at the conference, but had two little ones dragging me out of the room by the time we hit the middle grades.

Sorry I don;t have more to share & hope this helps. MAybe you can check out WEM if that structure is what you are looking for, the instruction is very clear & concise.

Robyn