Five Ways to Help Early Chapter Book Readers to Soar!

[Notes from the session presented by Christine Robson from TCRWP]

1. Get kids hooked on series books

• You can push kids' comprehension much further from book-to-book-to-book (Character work can become stronger once they know how the book tends to go)
• It can help foster the love for reading. We want readers to get hooked to the point where they can't put the book down
• Introduce books to create a buzz around books
• "If you love the Stink series, then you'll love the Judy Moody series"
• Partners who have a common text will be able to have a deeper conversation
• Build your series books in your library. 
• Good source for book series: ebay as well as half.com
• Have a book drive in your school. There are kids in your school that might no longer need the old book series they have sitting around home
• Have a broad range of reading level (J/K/L/M)

2. Book Introductions

• As a small group, bring some of the kids together to do a special introduction. Some times kids need an intro before 
• Ex: Magic Treehouse: If you don't read the first book, none of the other books will make sense.
• What are the complexities of this this text?
• Teachers College Field Guide can help (Noteworthy features, Characters, Structure, Writing about reading stuff, genre, etc.)
• You don't need to know every book in the series, but you need to know at least one book from the series very well
• How to do a Book Intro:
• Ex: Mystery Book Readers
• Step 1: Read the title and blurb...
• Step 2: Who? (detectives
• Ex: Possible Suspect/Theories (Kids at this level need to make more than one)
• Important for kids to have a plan (ex: Read the whole Cam Jansen series)

3. Support accumulating text, envisioning, inference, and synthesis

• Books will start to get a lot longer in chapter books.
  
• How is your chapter book organized? Is each chapter a new story? Think through together: What are the problems and solution from each chapter?
• Kids first have to think about their book: (Need to read the blurb)
• 5 short stories? Think about problem and solution from each chapter?
• Is it one problem across multiple chapters?
• Set it up:
• Read the blurb
• Read the chapter titles
• If there is one big problem, then there is one solution (Kids don't always realize that)
• How's it organized? Bunch of short stories with each one having a problem/solution, then at the end we think about how the problems and solutions are related? Or one big long story across the text? Have to be thinking from chapter-to-chapter-to-chapter about how they are trying to solve the problem and come to a solution.

4. Write about reading

• Way to start accumulating text: 
• From the blurb: Record what is the most important in relation to the problem?
• Chapter 1: Most important thing that happened (in relation to the problem)?
• Chapter 2: Most important thing that happened (in relation to the problem)?
• Chapter 3: Most important thing that happened (in relation to the problem)?
• Chapter 4: Most important thing that happened (in relation to the problem)?
• Bare minimum as a chapter book reader: At LEAST one post-it in each chapter about the most important thing in relation to the problem
• She will model this during read aloud (She will have a bunch of post-its. Turn-and-talk, which post-it is the MOST important. [The one that is related to the problem/solution])
• Once kids are able to accumulate text, then they are ready to start doing some inferential work
• Pay attention to the action of the character. What does that make me think about them?
• Characters in this level often don't change. But kids can still think about how the character's FEELINGS changed. (Feelings changing are not the same as attributes changing)
• Don't accept only one answer. Push on their comprehension!
• They need multiple with evidence for each one
• Stop and jots on Post-its
• They need to be IDEAS (it is what the text does NOT say) If it said Poppleton like spaghetti, then it's not an idea.
• Character
• Relationships
• Lessons

5. Move partner work from conversation to collaboration

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