Introduction Letter/Possible Letter Topics
Dear ______________,
Your reading journal is a place for your teachers and your friends to talk about books, reading, authors, geography, and science. In your letters to us, you’ll think and write about reading. Our letters will become a record of our discussions about literature: our thinking, learning, questioning, and the reading we do over the course of the year.
-Letters should be three paragraphs long.
- The first paragraph will be a paragraph response to the read aloud.
-The second paragraph will be a response to what you are currently reading.
-The third paragraph is a meta-cognition paragraph where you reflect on your learning and work.
At a bare minimum you must write a letter to a friend or us in your own journal at least once a week, due by Wednesday morning. This is only a minimum requirement. You may write as many letters as often as you like. Once you earn the right to write your peers, you can choose to write to anyone including your parents or students in other classes. For the beginning of the year we will abide by the following rubric but it will change as we move through the year.
1. Follows format outlined above.
2. Each paragraph is at least five sentences long and stays on one topic.
3. Each paragraph has a topic sentence that is a claim.
4. Evidence in the paragraph backs up the claim
When you write a letter, give your journal to the person to whom the letter is addressed. That will be your teachers for the first few months.
These letters are an opportunity for us to learn more about literature and ourselves. We are excited at the prospect.
All the best,
Jaimie, Chris, Kristen, and Mr. Wright
Possible Letter Topics
How the author wrote
-Plot and pace: What happened? How quickly did the author move the plot along? Fast enough to hold the reader’s attention? Slow enough to be plausible? Was there too much action and not enough character development?
-Plausibility: Did the plot seem believable? Did the situations the characters found themselves in seem reasonable? Did it matter?
-Detail and description: Could you see it happening? Hear it? Feel it?
-Dialogue: Was the dialogue realistic?
-Affect: Did the reader laugh? Cry? Why?
-Setting: What time and place did the author choose? Was the setting integral to the story?
-Main characters: Who were they? What makes a main character a main character? How can the reader tell?
-Conflict: What issue did the main character resolve?
-Theme: What was the author’s so what?
-Formula: Could the reader easily predict what was going to happen? Was it like other books from the genre? Author?
Point of view: Who told the story? First person? Third person? Why did the author choose this point of view? How did it impact the story for the reader?
Reader Strategies
- How does a reader decide what to read?
- Pace: Does the reader slow down, skim, speed up, look ahead? Why?
- Planning: Does the reader anticipate reading a particular author, genre, or book?
- Length of time to read a book: Why so long or quickly?
- Predicting: Did the reader guess what might happen next? Was the prediction confirmed?
- Reading rate: How many pages did the reader cover in half an hour?
- Connecting: Did the reader connect the book to other authors, genres, or their own experiences?
- Difficulty: What does a reader do when a book is too tough? What makes a book a challenge?
- Unknown vocabulary: What did the reader do when they came across an unfamiliar word?
The Reader’s Affect and Recommendations
- How did the book make the reader feel?
- What did the reader learn about through the story?
- What were the best and worst features of a book?
- What did the book make the reader think about?
- Is a book worth recommending?
- Who might enjoy it?
- What are titles by other authors that address similar subject or theme?
- Who are skillful authors?
Letter Writer’s Style
-Too book report like or too much retelling of the plot: boring if the teacher has read the book and maddening if it’s a book the teacher anticipates reading/
- Too brief to develop a point: a postcard rather than a letter.
- Confusing: unclear as to the reader’s opinion or meaning.
- Off topic: treating letters as notes to passed in class rather than vehicles for thinking and conversing about literature.
Your reading journal is a place for your teachers and your friends to talk about books, reading, authors, geography, and science. In your letters to us, you’ll think and write about reading. Our letters will become a record of our discussions about literature: our thinking, learning, questioning, and the reading we do over the course of the year.
-Letters should be three paragraphs long.
- The first paragraph will be a paragraph response to the read aloud.
-The second paragraph will be a response to what you are currently reading.
-The third paragraph is a meta-cognition paragraph where you reflect on your learning and work.
At a bare minimum you must write a letter to a friend or us in your own journal at least once a week, due by Wednesday morning. This is only a minimum requirement. You may write as many letters as often as you like. Once you earn the right to write your peers, you can choose to write to anyone including your parents or students in other classes. For the beginning of the year we will abide by the following rubric but it will change as we move through the year.
1. Follows format outlined above.
2. Each paragraph is at least five sentences long and stays on one topic.
3. Each paragraph has a topic sentence that is a claim.
4. Evidence in the paragraph backs up the claim
When you write a letter, give your journal to the person to whom the letter is addressed. That will be your teachers for the first few months.
These letters are an opportunity for us to learn more about literature and ourselves. We are excited at the prospect.
All the best,
Jaimie, Chris, Kristen, and Mr. Wright
Possible Letter Topics
How the author wrote
-Plot and pace: What happened? How quickly did the author move the plot along? Fast enough to hold the reader’s attention? Slow enough to be plausible? Was there too much action and not enough character development?
-Plausibility: Did the plot seem believable? Did the situations the characters found themselves in seem reasonable? Did it matter?
-Detail and description: Could you see it happening? Hear it? Feel it?
-Dialogue: Was the dialogue realistic?
-Affect: Did the reader laugh? Cry? Why?
-Setting: What time and place did the author choose? Was the setting integral to the story?
-Main characters: Who were they? What makes a main character a main character? How can the reader tell?
-Conflict: What issue did the main character resolve?
-Theme: What was the author’s so what?
-Formula: Could the reader easily predict what was going to happen? Was it like other books from the genre? Author?
Point of view: Who told the story? First person? Third person? Why did the author choose this point of view? How did it impact the story for the reader?
Reader Strategies
- How does a reader decide what to read?
- Pace: Does the reader slow down, skim, speed up, look ahead? Why?
- Planning: Does the reader anticipate reading a particular author, genre, or book?
- Length of time to read a book: Why so long or quickly?
- Predicting: Did the reader guess what might happen next? Was the prediction confirmed?
- Reading rate: How many pages did the reader cover in half an hour?
- Connecting: Did the reader connect the book to other authors, genres, or their own experiences?
- Difficulty: What does a reader do when a book is too tough? What makes a book a challenge?
- Unknown vocabulary: What did the reader do when they came across an unfamiliar word?
The Reader’s Affect and Recommendations
- How did the book make the reader feel?
- What did the reader learn about through the story?
- What were the best and worst features of a book?
- What did the book make the reader think about?
- Is a book worth recommending?
- Who might enjoy it?
- What are titles by other authors that address similar subject or theme?
- Who are skillful authors?
Letter Writer’s Style
-Too book report like or too much retelling of the plot: boring if the teacher has read the book and maddening if it’s a book the teacher anticipates reading/
- Too brief to develop a point: a postcard rather than a letter.
- Confusing: unclear as to the reader’s opinion or meaning.
- Off topic: treating letters as notes to passed in class rather than vehicles for thinking and conversing about literature.