Skip to main content
HOORAY! The book is out. You can purchase it online here (click on the picture!):


Here's the Table of Contents:


Here's the focus of the chapters:

The book follows the trajectory of the reading response notebook work as it unfolds across an academic year. The first chapters describe explicit teaching of RRN strategies that we want all students to know and use. Later chapters will demonstrate how students develop agency for the strategies we teach and generate their own, then through ongoing sharing sessions, they develop autonomy. In Chapter 1, “A New Vision of the Reading Response Notebook,” I define the new vision of the reader response notebook that is the focus of this book, and how it differs significantly from the more standard uses of the RRN in schools. I explain some of the theories that this vision is based on. I also present an expanded vision of what counts as a text in school, including popular culture texts. In Chapter 2, “Getting Started,” I explain how to launch this work with students. I explain expanding what counts as texts for students, using reading logs, and teaching a first strategy, using the gradual release of responsibility model (Pearson & Duke, 2002). I also share students’ ongoing lists and how these lists develop their literate identities. In Chapter 3, “Expanding Possibilities,” I explain next strategies to teach, using an anchor chart to support students’ strategy use. I take you inside classrooms to hear how instruction unfolds for students to accomplish these strategies.
In Chapter 4, “Towards Agency, Autonomy, and Accountability,” I show how we develop and implement a checklist to support students’ independent use of strategies. I describe share sessions that promote students’ reflective self-assessment, build a community of practice, and stimulate generative and creative responses. I then discuss establishing grading criteria that hold students accountable for their work. I share ideas for using these grading criteria in manageable ways. I share dialogic classroom practices, such as conferring, small group and whole class discussion, with the RRN as mediational tool. I provide three text boxes, after Chapters 2, 3, and 4, that provide practical advice for common challenges you might face while implementing this work.
In Chapter 5, “Permeable Boundaries: Living Literate Lives in and out of School,” I share how the RRN becomes a tool that bridges students’ literate practices in and out of school. I share their generative responses that co-opt popular culture and social media formats, and school-based response formats for popular culture texts. The playfulness and flexibility that arises, in turn, empowers students’ literate identities. In Chapter 6, “Changing Lives,” I share students’ reflections of how this notebook work helps form their identities as literate beings, and what their responses suggest for our work as teachers. I also share teachers’ reflections of how this work is transforming their literacy teaching practices. Finally, I share some thoughts of next steps in our own journey using RRNs. In each chapter, I show how this work addresses and expands what state and national standards expect for excellent teaching and learning in the English Language Arts. In the appendices, I provide anchor charts and grading forms. So, buy the book and let's continue this conversation. 


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Reader Response Notebook Overview

The Reader Response Notebook By Ted Kesler             The reader response notebook (RRN) is a ubiquitous tool in schools. In at least grades 2 through 8, teachers rely on this notebook as evidence of students’ reading. In my extensive visits to schools around the country, I noticed a common application for this notebook: students write summaries of the books they read, or respond to a teacher prompt, such as “Describe the main character” or “Tell what new information you learned from this text,” and always “Be sure to provide text evidence.” Ultimately, response after response by students are expository paragraphs or essays that are often solely directed to and read by the teacher for evaluation. Responses soon become monotonous, devoid of voice and intention. Here is an example from one of my 3 rd grader students in my early years of classroom teaching: The student met all the criteria for this response. She started wit...
Post a Comment
Read more
 What an incredible day observing the RRN in action as a tool for thinking to support students' discourse about their books in Dr. Dina Weiss's 4th grade classroom. Students had such a variety of ways of responding to realize themes in their novels with pronounced social justice themes. 
Post a Comment
Read more
 Dina Weiss, 4th grade teacher, also uses the RRN with her undergraduate students at Queens College.  Dina reports:  QC students are developing their own reading responses that are accumulated in a journal for the purpose of showing their future students how to respond to text meaningfully. It's an assignment in my syllabus that they create a reading response, mentor journal that they can use during strategy group work to help students build their comprehension.  Here are some more photos. One of the QC students took it upon herself to create a new reading responses. She merged her love of art with the reading response work. She understood the power of reading responses to elevate a students deep thinking of a text. She made an Instagram page for a character, she visually showed the complexity of problems a character was having, and I she showed the intersection of theme and complexity of character relationships using a color-coded system.       ...
Post a Comment
Read more