Key Points to Remember When Writing your Reading Responses
- Provide a thesis statement for your RR in the first sentence or two.
- Weave short relevant quotations into your sentences to support your thesis.
- Provide enough context from the novel so readers understand.
- Provide the page number after the quotation. Example: ". . . reading" (49).
- Word choice is important.
- Avoid "you" and eliminate phrases such as "I think," or "I believe," and "What I got out of this was."
- Spell correctly and check your grammar.
- Avoid cliches or overused sayings as you write your responses.
A tip to make your writing sound more energetic: minimize the use of the verb "to be" in the forms of "is," "was," or "are." This will force you to use more active verbs. For example, instead of saying, "Charlotte is a spider who weaves incredible webs," say "Charlotte the spider weaves incredible webs." Instead of saying "Taran is a curious and impatient young man. That is why he had to learn his lessons the hard way," you could say "Taran’s curiosity and impatience cause him to learn many lessons the hard way."
The book I just finished reading was titled The Sign of the Beaver. It was about a boy having to live in the woods by himself and prepare the cabin him and his father and built while his father went back and got his mother. The boy runs into Indians who he becomes friends with. He teaches and Indian boy how to read and in return the Indian teaches him how to survive. It took his parents a lot longer than expected to return back to the cabin. The Indians offer the boy to go with them as they move west. He is faced with the tough decision to go with or stay and wait for his parents and might not ever come. He decides to stay and shortly after the decision he is reunited with his parents.
ReplyDeleteThe book I am in the middle of reading is The Outsiders. It’s about a group of friends who stay together throughout all the trouble on the streets in the 1950’s. When two boys get jumped and one boy is getting drowned his friends stabs the jumper. They have no choice but to leave town, change their appearance, and hide out in an abandoned church. When the boys get go to grab a bite to eat, some kids decide to have a picnic at the church. When they boys get back the church is on fire, they have no choice but to rescue the kids. In the process they both get severely injured and are forced to be brought to the hospital where they get found out.
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ReplyDeleteIn my book, Wintertown, by Stephen Emond, a boy and girl are reunited year after year over Winter Break. This year, when Lucy comes home, Evan finds that she has completely changed her appearance and doesn’t know if his best friend is still there. There are many illustrations scattered throughout the pages, from the random drawings Evan had supposedly drawn, to comics of the two friends. It was the drawings in the first place that drew me to this book, because it’s still a good size novel—but it had pictures, which makes it so much more entertaining to read. Slowly, after many starts and fails at conversations, Lucy begins to open up to Evan once again, and Evan believes he might finally have his best friend back—or maybe someone that means even more to him. But just when everything seems to be going good, doubts begin to bombard Lucy about the life she’s lives back home, and the person she’s pretended to be with Evan. With only a few weeks left before she’s gone again, this time maybe for good, it’s up to Evan to show her that the past doesn’t define her.
ReplyDeleteIn the Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd, the main character Lily Owens and her maid Rosaleen are running away to Tiburon, South Carolina to find out about her deceased mother’s past. Growing up Lily’s father had always blamed Lily for the death of his wife. Fed up with her father as well as escaping the law with Rosaleen, Lily runs away. Once the two girls are in Tiburon they meet August, June, and May Boatwright. These three sisters are beekeepers and hold the secret to Lily’s mother’s past and what truly happened when she died. While staying with the Boatwright Lily learns of the story of the Black Mary that is held in the Boatwright’s house. During her stay she also meets Zach, Augusts’ godson to whom she becomes very close to sharing goals and dreams. Towards the end of the novel Lily learns the truth about her mother and her connection to the Boatwright’s and Tiburon as well as the truth about her father’s lies.
ReplyDeleteIn my book, Messenger, by Lois Lowry the main character, Matty, escaped from his unhappy childhood filled with abuse and neglect to a new village which accepted and cared for victims much like Matty. The village is a happy place to live until community members start noticing dangerous changes in many of the people living there. The decision is made to close the community to outsiders, but Matty being the messenger, must make one last journey through the dangerous forest where he discovers a power within himself he never knew about.
ReplyDeleteIn my book, Travel Team, Danny is cut from former team, the Vikings, for being too small, but in reality he is one of the most talented kids at the tryouts. Danny’s dad, who was a professional basketball player, comes back to town and decides to coach another travel team with the kids who were cut from the Vikings. The team is terrible and loses all their games until Danny’s dad crashes his car and becomes seriously injured to the point he has to spend weeks in the hospital. Danny then becomes the coach of the team and leads the team to victory in their first playoff game against the Vikings.
ReplyDeleteI am currently reading Judy Moody is in a Mood. Yes, this is a little kid’s book and you can definitely tell. The book is always jumping around and has something going on to keep kids interested. So far in this book she has complained about not doing anything in the summer and not having a shirt with words on it, so she makes one. She has bought a Venus fly trap so she could pick her favorite pet for a school project. Judy is always doing something interesting, but it’s funny and a perfect book for kids.
ReplyDeleteThe book I am currently reading is Finger Lickin’ Fifteen by Janet Evanovich. This book is comedic, suspenseful, and mysterious. This book is a part of the Stephanie Plum series. Finger Lickn’ Fifteen is about how Stephanie works an extra job trying to solve how houses with security systems are being broken into, on top of being a bounty hunter. During all this her coworker/ friend Lula witnessed a murder, and is now being chased by two men. Stephanie is faced with challenges of work, always almost being killed, and her love life.
ReplyDeleteThe book I finished reading was “Shooter’’. This story was based in a true story from the Columbine High School in 1999. The author the only thing he did was changing the place and the name of the people that were involved. Len, Cameron and Carla are the main characters. Len and Cameron were been bullying at school. Len and Cameron were best friends because they felt saves together. Carla was going through her parents’ divorce. Cameron and Carla in some point of the story they stopped talking to Len. But, after a while they stared talking to him again because they felt like they need to be together. One day Len asked Carla to take red paint to school and Carla did she went to school earlier than usual and enter through the back, because the front doors were locked. Len also asked Cameron to bring red paint to school. But, when Carla and Len got to school they saw something they weren’t expecting to happen that day. Len stars shooting. Cameron protects Carla by putting her in a closet. Len got stuck in a room he heard gun shots but he didn’t know what way they were coming from. Two people were killed and Len killed himself during the shooting.
ReplyDeleteThe book I just got done reading is Crank by Ellen Hopkins. The story is about a young girl named Kristina who gets addicted to crystal meth. Her problems first start off when she goes to live with her dad for the summer. She meets a boy named adam who introduces her to drugs. Throughout the book Kristina lies about who she is and calls her separate personality “Bree”. Bree is the part of Kristina that has no boundaries, is daring and doesn’t care for consequences. When Kristina leaves her dads place she starts realizing she is addicted to drugs and calls it “the monster”. Kristina comes back home and meets two different guys and gets sexually involved with them. One rapes her and one is head over heels in love with her. Kristina starts getting bad grades and on top of it she is pregnant. We don’t for sure know how her drug use has affected the baby but at the end of the books she says he doesn’t sleep much and is always crying.
ReplyDeleteThe book I just finished reading is Kissing Doorknobs by Terry Hesser. The story is about a girl named Tara she is eleven years old. One day she heard the phrase that changed her life: step on a crack, break your mother's back... and before Tara knew what was happening, she was counting the cracks in the sidewalk everywhere she went. if she missed one crack or lost count, she had to go home and start all over again. Over time, Tara 's quirks changed and multiplied. To calm herself, she arranged her food carefully on the plate chatted with troll dolls, and recited prayers over and over. She didn't like behaving so oddly; she only knew she had to if she wanted to feel better. Tara's troubles only got worse when one day she developed a new ritual. She started kissing her fingers and touching doorknobs. I think this is a very good book about COD. I also like how it shows how she struggles through COD.
ReplyDeleteFor my genre book, I read Goosebumps: Night of the Living Dummy by R.L. Stine. For this genre book, my group wanted to do horror and be able to relate back to our middle school days. The story starts out with Lindy and Kris fighting; they are twin. As they fight, their mom get frustrated and asked them to go outside and enjoy the weather. They both do and soon enough Lindy finds a dummy. She calls it Slappy and decides that she want to make some money being a ventriloquist. Kris finds the dummy to be creepy and the job to be ridiculous but she later becomes jealous as she find that Lindy is able to perform her very first job at a birthday party. Discussing with my group member, we were able to conclude that the book itself is at a level of 5th grade to 8th. We were also able to infer that in this book the vocabulary level cause not as much suspense to us then to the middle school children. I still find the book interesting and able to compare this book to past books I've read.
ReplyDeleteI read Night of the Living Dummy by L.J. Stein. When I was little, I always thought that these kinds of books were so scary, partly because of the covers, but it wasn't scary or exiciting at all to me. The ending was predictable for me because these kinds of novels always have a twist to it at the end. I wasn't excited at all while reading this book, maybe becasue of the age level, but I am sure that this book would be more interesting and compelling for younger kids than older ones.
ReplyDeleteFor our group Genre project we choice to read Goosebumps: Night of the Living dummy by L.J Stein. As a kid used to find the Goosebumps books really scary, but know that I read this book it wasn’t as scary as I thought it would be. Mostly because it was met for middle schools and vocabulary is way too easy. I thought it was too simple to be scare, but kids it would be scare for them.
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