Often I write notes to parents and to students that recount a solution found during a class session. Here’s an instance that helped an 11-year-old student to understand an element of being an active reader.
Today’s assignment was to identify and define words [student] didn't know in Shakespeare’s Sonnet 116. He came up with a good number of words to define, but as we covered some of the lines, quizzing revealed other words he "guessed at." So we came up with a sentence that describes what to do about this problem and how it benefits [student]:
"When I see a word I usually would guess about, now I’m going to look it up instead to improve my reading comprehension and diction (word choice) in writing.”
I asked him if he knew what moving something to "top-of-mind" meant, and he said yes. Then we agreed this sentence would become top-of-mind while he reads. It specifies an element of the mysterious (to students) term "active reader."
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