"If students are not learning the way you teach, you have to adjust and teach the way they learn."
Reader's Response
The learning objective of the Reader's Response is to boost your reading fluency and reading comprehension. It will also improve your problem-finding, critical thinking, and writing skills.
Reader’s Response. Students will go beyond writing their opinion about the text and in at least three (3) sentences, examine, explain, then defend their personal reactions to the text. This means students will explain their why to their response and what caused them to respond the way they did.
Ex: While I was reading the story, "The Things They Carried," by Tim O'Brien, I wondered why O'Brien kept dwelling on the physical weights of the soldiers' items in so much detail. He wrote, "Jimmy Cross carried a compass, maps, code books, binoculars, and a .45(c)caliber pistol that weighed 2.9 pounds full loaded." He went into depth about the weight of everything but there was no feeling in how he wrote it. One thought is that maybe O'Brien was using the physical weight of the war to allude to the psychological weight of the war.
Reader’s Response. Students will go beyond writing their opinion about the text and in at least three (3) sentences, examine, explain, then defend their personal reactions to the text. This means students will explain their why to their response and what caused them to respond the way they did.
Ex: While I was reading the story, "The Things They Carried," by Tim O'Brien, I wondered why O'Brien kept dwelling on the physical weights of the soldiers' items in so much detail. He wrote, "Jimmy Cross carried a compass, maps, code books, binoculars, and a .45(c)caliber pistol that weighed 2.9 pounds full loaded." He went into depth about the weight of everything but there was no feeling in how he wrote it. One thought is that maybe O'Brien was using the physical weight of the war to allude to the psychological weight of the war.
Questions or Thoughts to keep in mind:
- What are the most significant points in the text?
- Is it arguing for something in particular? If so, what?
- What can you leave out?
- What ideas are less important to the response you are composing?
- Is there anything important that the text has excluded or left out? If so, what, and why would including more information be important?
- Does the text have any relevance within the community, the nation, or the world?
- Does it address any historical or contemporary social concerns?
- Can you connect this text to other texts you have read before (either in your current class, or outside it)?
- What is the ethos of the text or the author?
- Is the work convincing, compelling, and credible?
- What parts of the text will act as the best evidence to illustrate the points you want to discuss?
Questions from Georgia State University (GSU) Writing Studio