discussion | There's a Book for That

There is nothing more exciting for me than watching students really talk about their learning. I love the debate, the encouragement, the giggles, and the interrupting. I love watching one student really listen to another and then jump in to share ideas. These type of exchanges happen more and more during our morning reading group. Especially when we have informative non-fiction texts in hand!

This week I pulled out a selection of non-fiction titles from the Ready to Read series including Dangerous Dinos, Slithering Snakes, Sharks and Bugs. All written by Sarah Creese. (I purchased these titles through Scholastic)

Students were asked to read the book aloud with their partner and to note down cool facts they learned and list any questions they had as they read. We had done this in two small groups (led by me and my teaching partner) the week before so the students were familiar with this process. Today though, they were in charge of the way this process would roll out.

Students took turns reading the text aloud. Some pairs wrote questions and facts as they read. Others read and then came back to the text for a second read through.

The rich discussions came out of deciding what questions were important and which facts should be noted down. Two boys reading about dinosaurs couldn’t stop laughing about one sentence that stated that a T-Rex had such short little arms that it couldn’t touch its nose. They included this as a cool fact and then went on to write a question about what use T-Rex’s short little arms had.

There was a lot of “Listen to this!” “Should we write that?” “Did you know . . . ?” I also heard “Look for the page that says . . .” “Can you read that again?” Lots of rereading and checking for understanding.

Many went on to add pictures to their chart paper. As they drew, the talking continued, using the vocabulary that they had just been reading about. “Look I’m drawing a shark swimming in the shallows.” “Do you think these scales look real?” “I made the sharks jaws open so we could see the rows of teeth.”

Question lists were interesting and gave me a basis to start conversations with each group.

The best thing about this activity? Lots of discussion, reading and writing all managed by the students themselves. My role was to circulate and enjoy the conversations I joined and to do a little learning too! (Did you know some snakes can eat an entire deer? Eew!)

This week when we looked at non-fiction text, I wanted my reading group to think about pieces of information that they deemed important as either new information or information that should be shared. We used a series of insect books from Capstone Press as these little books have gorgeous photographs and simple, meaningful information. I wanted the focus to be on the conversation, not on reading long sections of text.

Students worked in partners and took turns reading a page of information. I encouraged students to also talk about what they noticed or wondered about in the photographs. I was pleased to see students referring to the text as they had these conversations, often rereading for clarity.

The task was then to each choose two pieces of information to share and draw about on a recording sheet. Some partners focussed on the same facts, others chose very different things. All the while, they were chattering about what they were thinking about what they saw and read.

Students referred to a chart of sentence starts that we had brainstormed together to help organize their thinking:

I found out that . . .
I discovered . . .
I just learned . . .
Did you know that . . . ?

Having a “Did you know . . ?” phrase honoured those students who did not find out anything new when they read the text. Students also used this phrase because they liked the excitement it generated.

The children studied the photographs carefully and added details to their own pictures to convey things that they were noticing. We have been talking a lot about “reading the pictures” as much as “reading the words” on a page.