Today is our third snow day and fifth straight day out of school. Listen, I’m不complaining, but my house looks like 12 zoo animals live here, and I’ve had on the same pair of black leggings since Thursday morning. Also, Nora is teething. #awesome
My fellow teachers know the snow day struggle… At this point in the game, you start to live in anxiety that the next day will be the day you have to go back to school. This is a crisis NOT because you don’t like your job, but because it means you probably should take a shower, and clean up your house, and grade a set of papers, but… maybe not. It is very stressful. On that note, I totally think there should be some kind of a rule that if you miss more than two days of school for snow, the first day back MUST be a 2-hour delay. No one can be expected to suddenly start waking up at 5AM again. Amirite?
Ha.
Anyway, joking aside, snow day season can be tricky for planning. In the past, I have taught works like凯撒大帝要么Huck Finnin January/February, and it’s been a disaster because everyone forgets everything after three days out of school, and I spend more time reviewing than actually reading and teaching. This year, I’ve wised up a little and created independent reading units for my ninth and tenth graders.我在包括下面的完整分配作为一个单词文件，但这是我在坚果壳中所做的：
- Students choose any book they want to read within a set list of criteria. (I let my ninth graders choose any work of fiction, and I required tenth grade to choose something multicultural.) Only one student per class can read a book, and it is “claimed” only when the student has the book IN HIS/HER HANDS and has submitted the signed parent permission form. Students are expected to bring their book to class EVERY DAY once the unit starts.
- 在单位,我教一系列Mini-Lessonson “generic” topics like archetypes, tone, word choice, etc. (see the full list of what I taught on the assignment sheets below – I just made my own quick Power Points, but you can also google for tons of free ones already done). After the lesson, students are required to post on the class discussion board (I set mine up in Blackboard) relating the lesson to their specific book. They are also invited to read each other’s responses and comment back and forth.
- At the end of each week, students submit a “Productivity Log” to record how much they have read etc. (This is also where I take off points for students that don’t bring their book to class, goof off during reading time, etc.)
- In addition, each student also conferences with me at least two times for a grade. They should be prepared to tell me what their book is about, answer questions about it related to topics we are discussing in class, and connect it to larger themes/motifs.
- At the end of the unit, students submit an “index card review”(explained in attachments) and participate in a class Socratic seminar where we introduce our novels to each other and attempt to find similarities across cultures/genres/etc.
You can download the entire assignment as an editable Word document here with lots more details/specifics:Independent Reading Assignment – Multicultural（10）Independent Reading Assignment – Fiction(9)
In addition, here’s a copy of the “Productivity Log” I give my students:Productivity Log
And, here’s the chart I use to keep track of scores etc. as we go:Reading Workshop Grading Chart
*Bonus* Here’s a fun survey I gave my students about their reading habits before we started:Survey
回答几个问题......
– I think this unit is ideal for three to four weeks max. Obviously, that may need to be adapted depending on snow days, the pace of your classes, etc.
– I tell my students that if they finish one book, they must immediately start another. I also allowed them to stop a book in the middle if they hated it (remember, this was meant to be enjoyable for them). The only requirement is that they are constantly reading. (This helps with the discrepancies between reading speed, etc. and has worked great for me so far.)
– The mini lessons should be short and sweet. I found that my students generally took a lot of time on their discussion board posts, and I still wanted them to have time to read every day, so I kept my entire lesson to 15 minutes max.
– I did not censor the content of the books, but I did put a disclaimer that it should be “appropriate for a high school reader” meaning notCharlotte’s Web要么Fifty Shades of Grey.我还有父母签署许可表来涵盖所有基地。
– I think you could pretty easily adapt this unit for students as young as third or fourth grade and to cover all kinds of topics/genres (memoirs, classics, survival stories, dystopian, etc.).
My ninth grade class finished one of these units right before winter break (also a GREAT time to do this since attention is at an all time low then), and they loved it. They are already asking to do it again!!
What other questions do you have for me? Have you ever done something like this with your classes? How has it worked?
May your snow days be plentiful and your make-up days be few,
E
Three snow days sounds amazing to me right now. We got two feet of snow and we had NO snow days, not even a delay!
However, I can totally feel your pain of five days at home with the kiddos.
我喜欢这个单位计划。我真的很喜欢它如何支持不同阅读水平的差异化。
I can’t wait to check out your unit plans. Thank you SO much for generously sharing them! I did an independent reading unit with 10th graders once, years ago, and loved it. I teach 8th grade now and I think they would love it too… if I could just squeeeeze it into our mandated unit curriculum somehow, I’ll be golden! (It can be done, just takes some finagling.)
Hey, I have a quick question about the grading chart. What does DB stand for?
讨论板
谢谢！所以欣赏这一点，完全同意所需的延迟开放 - 两天休息规则:)所有新课程都开始了我们回到学校的那一天...... eek！谢谢您的组织计划和可编辑模板！
Thanks so much for sharing this. I’m always looking for new things to do with my English classes.
So, I’d love some tips on how to get more organized. This is my first year teaching high school (I’m an early-childhood major), and I’m having a lot of trouble keeping up with the organization and grading. I understand the concepts and procedures, I’m just having trouble actually managing to implement them. I feel like I’m really lacking the TIME to get everything set up enough to keep it going. I don’t know what to do…! Please help! If anyone has ideas/tips, I’d really appreciate it Thank you in advance! (p.s. I teach history)
我也是一位第一次高中老师（我以前教过小学年龄）。我发现并非每一件小事都需要被评分。我在课堂上有课程级别的东西，我的学生想要“寒冷的日子”所以我给他们一个分配，他们可以在我级的笔记本电脑或任务时自己做，他们需要立即反馈。我还推荐Noverink.com或Membean.com，您可以立即获得关于学生正在做的直接反馈，并且当您想要照顾许可的日子时，您可以帮助您赶上特定课程和谈论一对一的日子与学生有关他们在课堂上做的事情。就像我说的那样，我每天都不这样做，但我发现它真的有帮助，然后事情忙碌！
for the person who asked what db stood for, I believe it’s a discussion board post…
Excellent lesson design for teaching free-choice novel selections!
What powerpoints did you use? Do you have your unit plan with the materials you used?!
Same question as another reader: What powerpoints did you use? Do you have your unit plan with the materials you used?!
This is amazing and was exactly what I was looking for in my search. Thank you for sharing!
谢谢你的伟大想法！我真的很兴奋尝试这种方法。我正在使用这个想法作为跳跃点，调整它以适应学生的需求。我想知道你的苏格拉底研讨会。您要求学生考虑如何考虑普遍主题等有何种类问题？
谢谢！
您是否有与您放在DB上的问题示例的链接？如果不是，你介意分享那些人的例子吗？谢谢！
Yes, how do you do discussion boards? On the internet?
Thank you so much for these awesome resources! I have done several versions of Independent Reading…I am loving these ideas!
如果您为自己阅读所有书籍标题，我很奇怪。
Thank you so much for these resources! Due to the pandemic (which has blessed me with the responsiblity of teaching four preps in a hybrid learning environment – phew!), I am looking to try some new things with my English class. I have done literature circles before in which students read the same book in small groups, but since my students are only in-person twice per week, I wanted to adapt that and do an independent novel study instead. These resources are just what I was looking for! Thank you for this post and for sharing your ideas.