In upper grade classrooms, students spend a great deal of time responding to the texts they read. Over the years I have found that no matter what grade level I teach, students have a difficult time writing thorough and meaningful reading responses. At the start of every year my students need quite a bit of guidance when writing their responses. One of the best ways that I have found to teach students to write meaningful responses is by providing them with sentence frames.
I like to encourage students to follow three simple steps when writing reading responses, each with sentence frames and prompts to use:
Step 1: What did you read?
- While reading...
- In chapter __ of...
- On page __ of...
- During today's reading of...
Step 2: What happened in the text?
- Tell what a character said.
- Tell what a character did.
- Tell what a character thought, felt, or learned.
- Describe the setting.
- Describe an important event that occurred.
- Explain a problem that was encountered.
Step 3: What did you think?
- This made me think...
- This made me realize...
- Based on this, I can infer...
- Based on this, I can predict...
- This reminded me of...
- I can relate to this because...
- I could visualize...
- I now understand...
This three-step process encourages students to not only tell what happened in a text, but also reflect on what they thought or felt about what they read. Here is a sample response using these steps:
I have included a FREE handout for you to share with your students to help guide them in writing thorough and meaningful reading responses. Click HERE download this FREEBIE.
If you are looking for more resources for reading response, check out my Reading Response Journals for literature and non-fiction texts. These resources include anchor charts for different reading strategies and skills, as well as more specific sentence frames for the different skills. Click on the pics to learn more.
