Slide #15

Before reading a book, the speaker displays a slide to guide students in their Reading Writing Companion. Students are instructed to circle important words, which are usually vocabulary words but can also include other significant words like character names. They are encouraged to mark confusing parts with a question mark and ask questions later. They are also asked to make connections to the objective or essential question and mark them with a "C". Finally, students are invited to highlight their favorite or most interesting part of the story with a heart. For this activity, I display this slide every time before we read a book in our Reading Writing Companion, because they can write in this book that goes along with the stories that we read. So they know that they're going to circle important words. Most of the time, that's their vocab words, but it can also be any other words that they find important to the story, maybe the characters' names and stuff like that. They'll put a question mark by confusing parts, things they didn't quite understand, things they need more clarification on, and they can ask those questions once we're done reading. They'll put C by any connections that they make throughout the story, either to the objective, to the essential question, things that they know are going to happen in the story. And then they will put a heart around their favorite or the part that they thought was the most interesting.