New Year, New Jottings

My third graders are on their way to becoming great readers and thinkers. I started them out slowly when creating jottings while they read. We made some jottings together and we used symbols to show our thinking. We did a sorting activity to distinguish weak jottings from wonderful jottings.



Then we moved on to some metacognitive thinking. During the read aloud of Stone Fox, students stopped and made three jottings: I wonder, I think, What if? Then during Independent Reading, students used the same three jotting stems while reading a leveled book of their choice.

 

I used these jotting stems to conference with students. I noted areas of strength and weakness in their jottings in order to compliment my readers and give them an area of improvement. Side note--yes, I know there are more technological ways I could record my conference notes, but I like my method of recording in writing.