Reading Logs and Homework Folders

Dear Families,
Tomorrow, your child will bring home his/her homework folder for the first time this academic school year.  Inside, you will find our reading logs.  Your child is expected to read for about 20 minutes every night and write about these books in our reading logs on Mondays, Tuesdays and Wednesdays. 

To help parents and students come up with writing  ideas, I have included a list of possible topics.  These ideas are there to help your child, but if he/she wishes to write about another aspect of the book read, he/she can, of course, do that. This is what the list looks like:
 

Writing ideas for the weekly Reading Log

My favorite part and why

My favorite character and why

Compare yourself to a character

How the character changed in the story

How the character is the same (or different) between different books (or chapters)

How a story reminds you of something

Write about the ending...did it surprise you, and if so, why?

Make a prediction before you read the book (then read the book and check.  Was your prediction correct? Why/Why not?)

Write about which reading strategies you used and how they helped you

Compare your book to another book (or author)

Is your book a fictional story or a non-fiction book? How do you know?

Homework folders are due back on Thursdays.  Thank you.

Your child will also bring home a Book Bag tomorrow.  Inside you will find books to read at home this week.  Some of the books were chosen by the students themselves.  We call them "Choice books".  At this time in the year, as we are learning to become critical readers and understand what type of books are "just right" for us, you might notice that some of these books do not reflect the text complexity you would expect.  Please ask your child why he/she chose the books.  Invite your child into a conversation about the different reasons why we choose books (ie we like the author, the character, we want to learn more about a specific topic, etc).  The book bag will also contain a book from me.  You will recognize this book by a colorful round sticker on the back.  These books are leveled and "just right".  Your child should be able to read these independently.  These books are also familiar to your child as we read them together in our Book Clubs already. 

Your child does not have to write about the books inside the book bag, although I encourage students to write about the "just right" book at least once a week.  The book bags are due back on Fridays.  Please help your child care for our books at home.  Please help your child pack these books so they return to our school as other children will read them as well.  Thank you for your assistance.

Let me know if you have any other questions.

Maria

PS.  When math homework comes home, it always comes home inside our Homework folders on Mondays.  Your child can return it any day of the week, or inside the Homework folder when it comes back on Thursdays.  Thank you. First graders will not have any math homework this week.