Reading responses

It took us a while to figure out that there was a difference between a reading response that you write in Readers' Workshop and an official response to literature that you write in Writers' Workshop! Now we understand that readers' response is the type of writing or drawing or oral response that you might do in Readers' Workshop. It is just what it says - a way that you respond to what you read. It is a way to think about books, and during an Author Study, it is a way to think across books. Kindergartners are just beginning to think about different ways that they might think about and respond to books. As this Author Study of Eric Carle unfolds, children are given many different ways to think about books and ways to write responses.

• Children are taught to notice between books (text-to-text connections), "Eric Carle's books have lots of animals."
  


• Children are taught to make connections to books, "Me and my daddy found 6 ladybugs on one leaf and they all looked different" in response to The Grouchy Ladybug



• Children are taught to wonder and ask questions, "I wonder why the caterpillar got so fat?"



• Children are taught to have opinions by identifying their favorite part or character and telling why they did or didn't like the story, "My favorite character was the elephant because he has a funny nose!"

All of these are different ways to respond to books, either orally or in writing. Some teachers even like to scaffold how the child talks or writes about the book by giving them some suggested starters. Other teachers perfer to have the children structure their own sentences.

Some teaches actually start their young kindergartners with Reading Response Notebooks - a place where they can record some of their thoughts about their reading. They teach the rituals and routines of using the Notebooks, but are always careful that they don't require too much writing, because they don't want to take too much time away from the valuable independent reading time in Readers' Workshop. Some teachers use a Reading Response rubric to help remind the children of what a response in their notebooks should look like. We used to begin Reading Response Notebooks in 1st grade, but many of our looping teachers have discovered that starting this in kindergarten provides much more depth as children reach 1st grade. Many times the teacher will use a student's reading response in the Closing meeting to show the type of response that she has highlighted in a mini-lesson.

This book is the Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle. My favorite part is when the caterpillar turned fat.

As children are writing responses to literature during Writers' Workshop, teachers will suggest that the children go through their Readers' Response Notebook to search for entires that might be used in an offical response to literature where they will be including an opening, a retelling or summary, and a closing - even adding a connection or favorite part - using the rubric that they have written as a class. Their responses during reading might be the beginning of thinking about what they want to write during Writers' Workshop.

What we want our youngsters to do is to begin to live a readers' life where they read and think deeply about the content and story - what the story means and how it applies to life. Readers' response gives children a structure to begin to think while they are reading, because it is our intent, not only to teach kids to decode words in these early grades, but to teach them to think while they read! Comprehension begins at the beginning!