Dear Fifth Grade Student,
You will have two choices for your reading/writing homework. One choice is to submit a sheet each day with your completed assignment. The other choice is to log into icampus (directions will be given in class and are also posted on this site) and type in your response into the online journal.
Expectations
Reading is a part of your homework every school night. A minimum of twenty minutes of reading should be followed by about five minutes of writing. I expect variation in your reading time based on other demands on your time, your interest in the part of the book you are reading, your attention span, and your reading skill level.
Each entry should begin with the date and time in the format: 09/09/09 9P. The time reflects the time you begin writing.
Each entry should have the last page you read, before starting writing, placed in the margin in front of your paragraph indentation.
Start each entry by indenting.
Drawings, graphic organizers, collages, or mini-posters are done on separate blank sheets, stapled and attached to your writing.
When you begin a new book, the following information should be written only once:
Author’s Lastname, Author’s Firstname. Title of Book. Place of Publication: Publisher, Year of Publication.
It should look like this . . .
Sachar, Louis. The Boy Who Lost His Face. New York: Random House, 1989.
Grading
Your grade on your reading journal is a major factor on your report card reading grade and also influences your writing, spelling, vocabulary and penmanship grades. I look at four factors to assign your grade. These factors are format, content, consistency and effort.
Format
I look to see if you have dated your entries, kept track of your page numbers, included all of the information for your book bibliography once, indented each new entry and kept your work well organized.
Content
I look to see if you have responded to your reading experiences using a variety of strategies and have clearly developed your ideas.
Consistency
I look to see that you are completing your reading journal each day in a reasonable manner.
Effort
I look to see that your writing reflects really having read and thought about books, magazines, etc. and shows that you are developing greater understanding about literature and the world of written ideas.
What to write about
You may write about the following:
· How the book reminds you of something from your own life
· A little bit about what things are happening in your book
· Something that surprised or pleased you
· A guess you made about what would happen in the story and whether you guessed correctly – maybe with what clues helped or fooled you
· Whether you like the book or not and WHY
· Whether you would recommend the book to someone (and who and why)
· Who you like among the books characters (or dislike)
· Whether the book is easy, just right or hard
· How the book makes you feel
· New ideas, or new ways of looking at things the book helped you see
· Why you abandoned the book
· Why you chose the book
You may occasionally, rather than write - make a cartoon, a mini-poster, an outline, a Venn diagram, a web, a drawing of a scene, a character, an interaction between characters, or any other inspired artistic response you chose. (Remember drawings are on blank paper, folded in half and inserted in your journal. Follow all directions for format (Date, time, page number . . . and then write, “See attached page.”
You may write advice to characters, to the author, or rewrite endings, descriptions etc. to show how you think the book could have been written.
You may write a poem about anything you’ve read that makes you feel like writing a poem.
Research consistently has shown that students who devise their own responses based on what matters to them improve their writing, their reading comprehension and their test scores faster and more consistently than students who answer specific teacher generated questions. So be creative and write, or draw, or show some other way, what matters to you about your reading experiences!