The Habits of Lifelong Readers and Writers - Grade 8
Creating a Text-Based Culture is a unit designed to both launch students’ independent reading and writing work and to assist students in periodically stepping back to assess their own work. This unit is designed to help teachers accomplish three things: First, it is intended to help teachers launch (or re-launch) a successful independent reading practice. Orienting students to independent reading includes introducing and discussing rationales for independent reading and constructing criteria for selecting books for independent reading. It also includes setting up the literacy notebook, which is intended to aid students in deepening and connecting the reading and writing life.
Table of Contents
Writing Tasks
Title: Rationales for Reading
Teacher Manual Instructions:
Session 1
Display a copy of “Rationales for Reading” for the class to see and distribute copies to students. Review the instructions at the top of the assignment sheet with the class and place students in groups of twos or threes.
Give students time to work with their partners to complete the “Rationales for Reading” worksheet.
- During this time, circulate around the room to discuss the quotations with the class and to address any questions students have about the work.
Title: Book Interview
Teacher Manual Instructions:
Session 3
Using the book you interviewed during the focus lesson, show students how to fill out the sheet. Answer any questions students have about the form and its terminology.
Give students time to fill out “The Book Interview” sheet. Each student should choose three books to interview from their group’s set.
Title: A First-Person Narrative Writing Like Sandra Cisneros
Teacher Manual Instructions:
Session 8
Display a copy of the “Writing Like Sandra Cisneros” assignment sheet and distribute copies to students. (See Appendix C for a copy-ready version.) Review the sheet with the class.
Once you’ve reviewed the assignment, read the three vignettes aloud, once again. If you display a copy of the stories as you read, this will give you a way to mark and annotate Cisneros’ beginnings and endings, her use of dialogue, internal dialogue, and description, and her methods of slowing or speeding up the stories.
After the reading or at intervals throughout, engage students in a discussion of “Our Good Day,” “Laughter,” and “Gil’s Furniture Bought & Sold” that has as its aim describing Cisneros’ use of dialogue, description, time, etc. in each story.
Next, fill out the “Critical Questions” portion of the “First-Person” chart.
Engage students in a discussion of the critical questions and ask volunteers to offer answers to them. (Keep in mind that these questions may feel strange to students when they first encounter them. It is likely that they won’t begin to make sense to most students until they apply them to the third-person stories in the study.) As an introduction, it may help to focus students on the effects of point of view on character.
What does the first-person point of view help us know or see about Esperanza? About Cathy? What about Rachel, Lucy, or other characters
What does first-person keep us from knowing or seeing about these characters?
Answer any questions students have about the assignment and then give them time to write.
Tell students that they should be prepared to share drafts of their first-person stories during the work period and closing meeting of the next session.
Use this time to confer with students about their work.
Title: A Third-Person Narrative Writing Like Bessie Head
Teacher Manual Instructions:
Session 11
Display a copy of “Writing Like Bessie Head” for the class to see and distribute copies to students.
Tell students that you are going to read “The Prisoner Who Wore Glasses” aloud, once again. Tell students that as you read, they should follow along, paying particular attention to details that might help them write like Bessie Head.
If you display a copy of the story as you read, this will give you a way to mark and annotate Head’s beginning and ending, her use of dialogue and description, setting, as well as her treatment of conflict.
After the reading or at intervals throughout, engage students in a discussion of “The Prisoner Who Wore Glasses” that has as its aim describing Head’s use of dialogue, description, setting, treatment of conflict, etc. in the story.
Answer any questions students have about the assignment and then give them time to write.
Tell students that they should be prepared to share drafts of their third-person stories during the work period and closing meeting of the next session.
Use this time to confer with students about their work.
Title: A Story-Within-A-Story Writing Like Raymond Carver
Teacher Manual Instructions:
Session 14
Answer any questions students have about the assignment and then give them time to write. Tell students that they should be prepared to share drafts of their “story-within-a-story” writing during the work period and closing meeting of the next session.
Use this time to confer with students about their work.
Title: What do different points of view make possible or prevent?
Teacher Manual Instructions:
Session 16
Optional Assignment: Teachers who are convinced that their students would benefit from an assignment like the one on the next page are encouraged to use the closing meeting discussion as a springboard into a brief writing task.
Title: Setting Goals for Independent Writing
Teacher Manual Instructions:
Session 19
Display a copy of “Setting Goals for Independent Writing” for the class to see and distribute copies to students. (A copy-ready version can be found in the Appendix C.)
Review the contents of the form with the class and answer any questions students have. Give students time to complete the “Setting Goals for Independent Writing” form.
Charts for Discussion
Title: Our Reading Life
Teacher Manual Instructions:
Session 4
Share a week in your reading life with students. Be sure to include the information you prepared referencing the teaching note from this session. The goal of this exercise is to represent as accurately as possible your reading over a specific period of time.
Ask students to turn and talk to each other about their own reading life, the way you just did.
Provide students with some questions on the board to prompt their sharing:
What books have you read lately? Titles? Authors? Genres?
What other materials have you read recently? Music lyrics, mail, street signs, comics, email, social media, recipes, text messages, news stories, textbooks, etc.
Why did you read these things?
Where and when do you read? Do you read in the bedroom, library,
bookstore, etc.? Before bed, at lunch, after school?
How did you locate each text? Was it from browsing a bookshelf at a store or library, or from a friend’s recommendation?
How did you read each text? Did you read it front to back? Every page? Did you skim some pages and reread parts of others?
After 3-5 minutes, reconvene the class and ask students to share summaries of their discussions. Work to capture a portrait of the class’s reading life on a chart.
Title: What We Know About Book Recommendations
Teacher Manual Instructions:
Session 5
Ask students to turn to the next blank page in their notebooks and to title the page “Book Recommendations.”
Ask students if they have ever read a book recommendation before—perhaps in a bookstore where bookstore employees have posted short blurbs endorsing a text or maybe online on a site like amazon.com or teenink.com. Ask volunteers to say what they know about recommendations and the kinds of things readers write in them. Jot these items on a chart titled “What We Know About Book Recommendations.”
Next, display or distribute copies of some model book recommendations. This will ensure that students have a connection with the content and will help expedite their understanding of the form. You can find model book reviews at sites like goodreads.com, teenink.com, or amazon.com.
Read two or three sample reviews aloud to the class. Use the following questions to guide students’ study of these models:
What do readers do in book recommendations (or book reviews)?
How do they begin?
How do they end?
What do they do in the middle?
Jot these questions on the board. Use these questions to drive the class’s discussion about each of the examples. Capture the class’s answers to the questions on the “What We Know About Book Recommendations” chart.
Title: Our Favorite Authors
Teacher Manual Instructions:
Session 7
After about 5 minutes, reconvene the class and ask students to help you generate a list of the writers students in the class admire. Capture these on a chart titled “Our Favorite Authors.” Encourage students to offer titles of favorite books, articles, stories, etc., as well.
Ask students to share what makes these authors compelling. Ask them if there are particular ways of writing that they think they could learn from studying these authors.
Title: First-Person Point of View
Teacher Manual Instructions:
Session 8
Review the “characteristics” of the first-person point of view with the class and then test them against Cisneros’ vignettes.
Afterwards, answer any questions students have about first-person point of view or the three vignettes by Cisneros as an example of first-person point of view.
Explain to students that during this session’s work period, they will have a chance to try their hands at writing a brief story using first-person point of view.
Title: Significant Moments in “Everything Stuck to Him”
Teacher Manual Instructions:
Session 13
Create a two-column chart titled “Significant Moments in ‘Everything Stuck to Him,’” and use this to mark down students’ ideas. Write or summarize the moment from the text in one column and the page and line numbers in the other so that the list can serve as a kind of common index to the story.
Title: Third-Person, Story-Within-A-Story
Teacher Manual Instructions:
Session 14
Review the “characteristics” listed under the “Outside” story (the story of the father and daughter in Milan) with the class and then test them against those portions of Carver’s story.
Afterwards, ask the class to help you create a list of characteristics for the “Story-Within-the-Story” (or “inside” story). There are some interesting questions to ask about this story. For example: What point of view is this story told from? Whose thoughts and feelings does the narrator give us access to in this story? Why is this story told in the third-person?
Ask the students how the story might be different if it were told with a different point of view: What if the “outside” story were told in the first person, with the “inside” story in third? Or what about the reverse, with the “outside” story in third person, but the “inside” story in first? Both in first instead of third? In what ways might these choices change the story?
Explain to students that during this session’s work period, they will have a chance to try their hands at writing a story-within-a-story using the point of view of their choice.
Checks for Understanding
Title: Behaviors and Benefits of Being a Strong Reader
Teacher Manual Instructions:
Session 1
Jot the guiding questions on the board or a chart.
“What are the behaviors or characteristics of a strong reader?”
“What are the benefits of being a strong reader?”
Facilitate a discussion with the class about these questions. Remind students to draw on the thinking they captured in their quick write and on their “Rationales for Reading” worksheet.
Record the students’ thinking about the questions on the board or a chart.
Title: Why Read? What the Research Says
Teacher Manual Instructions:
Session 2
Reconvene the class and facilitate a discussion where students share (and refine) their conclusions. Capture the class’ thinking on a chart titled “Why Read? What the Research Says.”
Remind students of procedures for cleaning and exiting the room, including how to store the literacy notebooks.
Title: Third-Person Point of View
Teacher Manual Instructions:
Session 10
Review the “characteristics” of the third-person point of view with the class and then test them against “The Prisoner Who Wore Glasses.”
Move on to the “Critical Questions” portion of the “Third-Person” chart. Engage students in a discussion of the critical questions and ask volunteers to offer answers to them. By now, students have had some practice with these questions. Cross-referencing the work with Cisneros’ vignettes may help clear up any confusion students have about what it means that a point of view permits or prevents “seeing.”
Once again, consider keeping the focus on character. (For example, what does the third-person point of view help us know or see about the characters? What does third-person point of view keep us from knowing or seeing about the characters?)
Afterwards, answer any questions students have about the third-person point of view or about “The Prisoner Who Wore Glasses” as an example of third-person point of view.
Explain to students that during the next session, they will have a chance to try their hands at writing a brief story using the third-person point of view.
Title: What do different points of view make possible or prevent?
Teacher Manual Instructions:
Session 16
Convene a whole-group discussion of the final question on the board.
During the discussion, be sure to insist that students refer to—and read from—the stories they read and wrote, as well as to the notes they made during the work period.
Capture the class’s thinking on a chart.
The goal here is to help students synthesize the work they have done with and around point of view during the study and to help all the students benefit from the class’s best thinking about the effects of point of view on narrative texts.
Independent Reading
Title: Reading Log
Teacher Manual Instructions:
Independent Reading
As you transition to independent reading, discuss how students can keep a reading log. Show students how you would like them to set up and use their reading log to record their independent reading this year. An example of one way a reading log could be set up is provided nearby. You may choose to have students create a table in their notebooks, use a pre-made sheet, or a digital format.
Explain to students that they should make an entry in their log only after they have finished a book. You will need to negotiate with students how to handle the entry of magazine readings (for example, entire issues versus individual articles).
After students have set up the log, including proper headings, creating the grid, etc., show students how to make an entry.
Answer any questions students have about the reading log.
Begin independent reading.
Consider conducting individual reading conferences with students as they are engaged in independent reading. In No More Independent Reading Without Sup- port, Debbie Miller and Barbara Moss (2013) suggest that during early conferences, you should listen to students and work to build trust: Ask students how they view reading and how they think of themselves as readers; ask what they are interested in. Over time you can ask more about what they are reading and about how you can help them or what they are struggling with. Use what you learn from these conversations to guide additional instruction with groups or with the class.
Title: Independent Reading – Individual Planning Sheet
Instructions:
Title: End of Marking Period Self-Assessment
Instructions:
Unit Resources
Title: Baseline Writing Task
Teacher Manual Instructions:
When students are ready to begin, give them ONE of the following prompts or something similar. (All students should respond to the same prompt for this work for easy comparison of responses.) For a full explanation of the baseline writing task and its uses, review the information in Developing Fluency in Writing.