Today we took the students to library. I was so surprised to find that struggling 6th grade readers still seem to enjoy picking out books and at least looking at them, if not reading them. I understand why the teacher wanted them to be quiet, but to me it was quite positive seeing them reading from and discussing a book, regardless of content (I suspect other teachers might not be so happy about some of the selections, but there you go). I wonder what we can do to continue to cultivate this as students get older. There are certainly plenty of "book discussion" group models out there; I'm wondering if we might be able to do something like this.
I'm still really enjoying our reading group. Today I took a map of our state to show the students where the events actually occurred, and they seemed to enjoy looking at it and finding where they live and where others in their family live etc. I'm thinking a bit more about the reading group and considering asking the teacher whether I can do something else. We're all enjoying reading the story, but the questions afterwards take a long time to read and do. I'm thinking about how to test comprehension in other ways. Multiple-choice questions just don't seem to do it. Although I think the author did a decent job of looking at other kinds of thinking, I'd like to see what else I can come up with here.
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