My goal was to have grade 5-8 students incorporate critical thinking in their reader response journals, where they respond to text read independently during Guided Reading stations. I feel reader response journals encourage students to apply strategies taught in class when reading independently to improve their understanding of a variety of text. Our SLIP goal for the past two years focused on reading strategies, so I was also trying to build on the work we were doing for the West Colony PLT.

The purpose of the video lesson is to outline how to make an effective personal response. It provides a graphic organizer in which students consider their intellectual and emotional responses to a reading selection or topic. They then use their point-form jot notes and expand them into a connected personal response to a literary selection.

Create a realistic text exchange between two characters in a novel, or use texts to explain a difficult concept.

You can use this site to create fake text conversations!

A tutorial on how to use the site is on the bottom of the page near the left.

A great non-fiction news site with a wide variety of articles written at differentiated Lexile levels.

There are daily quizzes and immediate feedback for students.

The site offers several resources, links and tips for teachers. The critical thinking prompts at the end of each article help spark student discussions and response or reflection opportunities.

Articles are divided into K-4, 5-6, 7-8 and High School.