Exciting news from our 2nd grade PLC per their meeting minutes.
One thing you probably know about me is my passion for Junior Great Book Stories. I find such value in their unique story selection, strategies for building vocabulary, call for deep thinking, emphasis on using evidence from the text to support thoughtful responses, and focus on deep inquiry though dialogue. This format is one of the most profound ways to impact student learning and offer students an anchor for the kind of behaviors we want for our readers to transfer each time they read.
Below is a testimonial from our 2nd grade PLC. Check it out!
* As a team we celebrated completing Junior Great. This is our second year using The Green Man to wrap up character traits, character motives and making inferences. We all shared how taking a text over the span of a week and diving deeply into the text, helped our kids to have rich discussions about their inferences to their burning questions. It was amazing to hear 2nd graders referencing text, to support their inference and provide evidence for their thinking. Even though the text was well above many of our student’s grade level, even our kiddos who are in RTI were able to participate in the discussions and provide evidence to support their thinking. We have since noticed in discussions, students referencing their text and asking their peers to reference their texts, to support their thinking!
5th grade, having named JGB in their successes for high reading test scores on the K-PREP test, is once again engaged in a class read of Lenny's Red Letter Day and then dividing up into groups so that students can compare that story to The Ghost Cat. I can't wait to see how the students respond. I am more than eager to hear their thoughts on the two stories and see the evidence of transfer in new and novel situations.
3rd grade is also about to embark upon reading a JGB story to build upon students' schema for expression opinions. Through the story, directed notes, dialogue, and written responses, students will gain and move forward on their journey as a critical reader and thinker.
I can't wait to see the celebrations from their minutes!
