We're a little more than half way through our inferring unit on Chris Van Allsburg, and we've been adding to our reading bulletin board as we progress. There's a lot of student thinking on these two boards. This is the "Read About It" side. On it I have our O.Q.I charts (I wrote about them in an earlier post). Students write a sticky note for observe (I know ...), question (I wonder ...), and infer (I think). We complete the O.Q.I chart after the first time we read each book in our inferring unit. We've just started our fourth book - The Mysteries of Harris Burdick (my favourite!). I've just been stapling the O.Q.I charts over the last ones, so we have four here. I have just enough room for the last two books. This is the "Think About It" side to our bulletin board. We have our learning goal, success criteria for answering an inferring question (co-created with the students), and some visual reminders on how to write an inference. I also put up a poster I made for my Inferring Package. (The OCD side of my is growing increasingly bothered by the top inferring learning goal. I'm pretty sure one of the first things I do tomorrow morning will be centering it over the chart paper.) Running down the centre of the two boards, I've posted the students' independent reading reflections from the end of first term. They have each taken on a 30 Book Challenge and on these cards they have reflected on their progress so far. Students wrote about how many books they have read, how many they should have read so far, and what genres they still have to read to meet the challenge. On the back of the cards they wrote all the books they have read this term. We also did this activity half way through the first term. When I take these current ones down off the bulletin board, they will get stapled to their first ones and filed in their portfolios. Well, that's about it for tonight. I managed to get this written while my husband was putting together my middle daughter's birthday present - a Barbie Dreamhouse. Happy 6th Birthday, Katie! And Happy Wednesday!
