Weekly Reading Homework and End of Month Project
- Students are expected to read for a minimum of 20 minutes per night. Students have the freedom to choose a book that is of interest to them as long as it is at their “just right” reading level. If students are reading a just right book each night, they should be able to read at least 2-3 books each month. The genre of the book they choose will also depend on the month:
- September – Realistic Fiction
- October – Historical Fiction
- November – Fantasy
- December – Biography
- January – Student Choice (Any fiction)
- February – Mystery
- March – Realistic Fiction
- April – Student Choice
- May – Student Choice
- June – Student Choice
- In addition to the 20 minutes of reading, students are expected to respond to their reading each night. This year, the reading response will be done digitally and accessed through the homework section of our class website. The homework will be a 20 point assignment consisting of a short form detailing the date (1 pt.), book’s title (1 pt.), author (1 pt.), pages read (2 pts.), a 4-5 sentence response (10 pts.) and spelling/grammar/punctuation/capitalization (5 pts.). Students may complete a handwritten response on lined paper to be handed in in lieu of the online form.
- At the end of each month, students will be able to choose from a list of projects to share about one of the books they read that month. The options include:
- Creating a book trailer on Flipgrid
- Writing a narrative chapter showing what they believe would come next in the story
- Completing a story mountain
- Writing a five-entry diary from the perspective of the main character
- Finding 5 “artifact” items that would be in a museum dedicated to their book and writing a description card of what each item is and explaining its importance to the story
- Building a shoe box diorama of an important scene from the story and writing an explanation of the scene.
- Drawing and creating speech bubbles for the graphic novel version of their story
- For the month of December, when we read biographies, everybody will complete the Cereal Box Project for the end of the month. The directions can be found here.
- The projects are worth 100 points. They are due on the last school day of each month and points will be deducted for each day they are late.