Taking notes is a foundational skill that will accompany your student throughout their entire educational journey, and beyond. Even though there is no “right” way of taking notes, it is important to learn how to extract relevant and pertinent information from a text in a neatly organized, concise manner. This takes practice. When students are encouraged to practice note taking, and engage in the work of capturing the most important facts from their reading, they will begin to recognize how all the parts of a story fit into a larger picture. Learning to take notes helps to lay the foundation for rich, clear, and organized writing.
When readers observe character development, trace a setting, and watch a plot thicken, they are learning more than just the skill of recording facts, they are actually beginning to realize the potential of storytelling. Teaching students to dig into a story, to do the “work” of reading for meaning, enables them to discover how language has the power to communicate significance.
Consider what is gained as students learn to infer abstract traits and values from literal details embedded in great stories.
curious, wise, boastful
shy, witty
arrogant, reliable,
courageous
devout, outlandish
stable, tricky, vain
List poem?
No! This list is a portion of the lexicon that develops over time as readers dig into the work of thinking deeply about fictional characters.
As students reach for just the right descriptive adjective to assign to a character's unique personality they simultaneously expand their vocabulary, recognize the profound specificity of language, engage with the story at hand on a deeper level, and gain deep understanding of abstract real-life concepts from a make-believe situations.
The sample page above is student work in response to Leo Lionni's It's Mine, a simple fable about the blessings of sharing. Our Earlybird literature guides provide your youngest students with the opportunity to share classic read-alouds with you, while exploring simple literary concepts like characterization and plot. Find all of our Earlybird guides here!