Reading+Quarter+1

=Reading Aloud= [|Soup and Me] by Robert Newton Peck -- first read aloud Reading out loud to a class is a learning experience on many levels. It is a chance for me to model good reading habits and strategies with the whole class. I check for listening skills by the individual response I see during the reading and in their response notebooks. These notebooks have answers to questions I post before each reading. The questions are used to guide the students to a clearer picture of what is happening in the story, or lead them to a deeper meaning. For example, __Soup and Me__ is an autobiography about a boy and his best friend growing up in Vermont at the turn of the century. In one of the chapters the boys chase a turkey and finally catch it. While most of the chapter was about the chase and capture, what the boys do with the turkey and how the author’s mother feels about it is the real message we discussed in class and in the response notebooks. The notebooks are collected and checked about once a week. I encourage students to read as much as they can. For assigned reading I include these minutes in my limit of 25 minutes a night for English and Social Studies. However, we all read at different speeds and some students may need to spend more time reading to finish assigned readings. Reading beyond the limit for the class is always an option. The beginning of the year is also a time of reading assessment. All English teachers at the middle school level are evaluating how well our students read, and making plans to challenge them to become better readers.