Conversation Calendars

This week and next week students will be filling out their conversation calendars when they are done with reading time. One week half the students will be on a Monday/Wednesday/Friday schedule and then the next week they will be on the Tuesday/Thursday schedule. The other half of the class will be on the opposite schedule. I love these conversation calendars. During the two weeks I get to have five conferences with each student. That means when the two weeks is done I am able to have over 250 conferences.

On the day students are supposed to write they will grab their Conversation Calendar and write to me in that days spot about what they were thinking. Then the students turn the paper in after writing. While students are writing the other half of the class meets me at the rocking chair and tells me about what they were reading. I take each stack of papers home at night and write back. I might ask questions or agree with the students or just try to keep the conversation rolling. Finally the students get their paper back on their next writing day. They read what I wrote back and our conversation continues.

We told the students that over the next two weeks we want them to try to make their conversations about the characters in the books they have been reading. We have been introducing different ideas of what students can think about when it comes to characters. The room is starting to fill up with different character posters.

These are not the exact posters from our room but I forgot to take pictures of our posters today so these will have to do. If you are reading at home over the next few weeks, you could try to talk about the characters in the book or movie or television show you are watching. These conversations would just support the ideas that we are talking about in class. 

I hope your week is off to a great start.