Are you looking for ways to get your students to think a little deeper about what they are reading? Are your students always just summarizing or retelling without making those ever so important inferences? Reading Response Journals are your answer! They make it easy to focus kids’ attention on thinking beyond the text with straightforward prompts for fiction or nonfiction reading! Reading Response Journals are simple to cut and paste into composition books or notebooks too and the best part of all of this is I already did the work for you! Check them out here!
Reading Response Journals
Looking for some more insight into these perfect Reading Response Activities? No problem! The set includes 6 sets of Fiction response question slips (total of 30 prompts) and 3 sets of Nonfiction response question slips (total of 15 prompts). Take the time out of searching for prompts each year that fit perfectly into different novels or stories. Just grab the sets and apply when needed! The sets are easy to print out, cut, and glue into notebooks so that the students are interacting with the prompt and responding to it easily in their own reading notebook!
Even better, these prompts can be used orally too. They can be used with class read alouds, or independent reading! The opportunities here are endless! Gauge your student’s comprehension and understanding of any book. Then take the valuable data from the reading response journals to plan more reading workshop lessons.
How Can I Use These Reading Response Prompts?
The Reading Response Journals can be used in guided reading groups too. Use one or two to discuss together and then have them respond individually with a different book or different story. This proves to be a great guided reading activity for all elementary school ages.
Each prompt asks students to respond in writing. But also draw a picture to show their thinking making this ideal for even the youngest learners. As a matter of fact, reading responses really are exceptional for working with reading workshop lessons and guided reading activities.
The fiction questions revolve around setting, characters, and even vocabulary. The questions spiral towards deeper thinking. Basically they start with what is the setting and then spiral up to writing about a lesson learned from the story. The nonfiction includes main idea, vocabulary, and even ideas for further research. Altogether, the work is done for you, and no need to search endlessly for the exact prompts you are looking for!
During readers workshop is a phenomenal way to get kids reading and thinking about reading. One of the most critical parts of guiding reading activities is using reading responses to truly assess understanding.
Finally, take the time to work on some exciting bulletin boards and let me handle the reading response journal ideas! Head on over to TpT and grab your set now!
What Else Reading Related Do Ya Got?
Looking for more information on how I run my reading block? In that case, check out some of these blog posts.
Guided Reading Groups or Skills Based Reading Groups
Choice Boards In The Classroom