The first or second day of school, I had students do a writing response to a picture book I read. I gave them a few guidelines, but I really just needed a baseline sample for what kinds of writing they could do about their reading. Most wrote a couple of vague sentences, and none were in any way outstanding in their analysis. The day after, I started introducing the terms that Nesi uses in her book: tone, pace, characterization, and story line. I had the students write down a general definition of each in their reading notebooks for reference, and then I handed out a "bookmark"from Nesi's book with the different terms and some examples of each. For tone, students could choose from bittersweet, humorous, melancholy, etc... Pace included gentle, lively, or fast. Characterization included describing characters as believable and relatable, or quirky, among others. Story line asked students to think about whether the story was more action based or character based, and we discussed what that might look like in a story. As I read the day's story, students were given time to check off terms on their bookmarks that they thought fit the story we were reading.
After a group discussion of what they thought the story was in each category, we proceeded to write a short paragraph using these terms. What a difference having some language to use made in these paragraphs! Students were talking about why they thought the pace was gentle, or why the tone was bittersweet. Having some terms to use made them analyze their reading more closely and made their discussion more specific; instead of saying, "I really liked the book," now they were able to tell what it was about the book that made them like it.
Eventually, we moved to writing a paragraph about one of the terms, instead of all of them in one paragraph. This has allowed students to deepen their thinking, giving several examples to support their thinking rather than just one. Their final writing project this trimester is a literary essay, and for that, they will need to pick three of the four terms, write paragraphs to support their thinking, and include an introduction and conclusion. We have talked about what happens if you didn't like the book, and how you could say, for example, that the pace was slow, which did (or did not) fit the story, and that you don't like books with a slow pace because they don't capture your attention (or whatever your reason is). As the year goes on, I hope that the usage of the terms becomes more automatic, and that kids will be talking about them when they recommend books to one another. Having some vocabulary to discuss their thinking has really made a difference in my classroom this year.
