At the beginning of most classes, students talk with each other about their Independent Reading, sharing thoughts about their books and themselves as readers. We have recently upped the expectations for the level of thinking we share. We have been working on identifying and sharing meaningful thoughts - thoughts that could, with continued conversation, lead to deeper understandings of books, authors, characters, readers, people, and even the world.

We introduced a new expectation for IR+ days: a Reflective Book Log on which students record information and observations about their reading. This is designed to prompt students to be active, engaged, awake, and reflective readers.

Students continue to talk about their IR books when the arrive in class. They are excited and enthusiastic about their own books as well as those of their classmates.

We recently read two nonfiction texts: Mystery in the Desert: The Nazca Lines, and The Mystery of the Vasa. We used these books to talk about words such as theory and theories, and to practice reading fluently, stressing certain words and making our voices go up and down.

We read a realistic fiction story called Hallie's Song. It provided good practice in thinking about why a character behaves the way she does. We also read a fantasy story called Toverquest. In this book, we saw how an author can use an object as a symbol for a larger idea. We used this book to practice our reading fluency. We noticed how in suspenseful parts, an author might write long and short sentences. When reading these long sentences, we have to keep our eyes moving ahead of our eyes.

Students continue to read books from the LLI program.

Our last book was Charging Foul. In our follow-up discussion, one student's question led to a great teaching opportunity about how we make inferences when we read. Students realized that we often have to figure out what is probably true, and that to do so, we have to bring in our knowledge of the world. But one's inferences have to stay close to the information provided by or hinted at by the author.

Our last book was Charging Foul. After reading and discussing, we used it to practice reading with good rate and intonation.

We finished reading Hallie's Song and used it to practice one way of thinking that leads to deeper comprehension. We looked at one scene and thought about what the character did and why she did it. Thinking about a character's motivations is one way to "get" what the author is trying to show us.

Students are reading a book called Gossamer. We are jotting notes as we read, discussing our ideas together, and then writing long about one of our ideas. This kinds of writing is writing to think. It allows us to hold our thoughts in our hands and prompts us to write more, think more, understand more, and read more deeply.