1. They can get another book. We are doing reading push-ups.
or
2. Write their book review and make a poster, which are due before the end of the marking period.
Students will make one book review and a poster by the end of the marking period.
The review will be typed on our wiki or sent to me electronically. See sample below.
The poster must be hand made and awesome.
My goal is for students to recommend books which other students will be inspired to read. This does NOT mean that students must write a review after every book. KBAR is used for writing push-ups and is a formative grade. The book review is the summative grade of their efforts.
The poster should be amazing because I want to hang them around the room for inspiration. The posters will resemble magazine ads in the sense that they will be trying to get students to try the book.
The written reviews will be compiled into a page online so students can refer to the list and read the reviews before choosing a book. (I have to make this.)
I hope I have covered the basics. I really did not expect students to need this so soon. This is a good problem to have, though. :)
The example below is not a 100%.
I would place it around a 90%, even though I wrote it. I wanted to create a quick example.
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Sample Review
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Rubric
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I read The Afterlife by Gary Soto.
What
happens when we die? This question has
intrigued us forever, and there are lots of explanations. Gary Soto gives us his creative thoughts on
the subject in his book The Afterlife.
The
narrator is dead. He was killed in a
nightclub for something as trivial as complementing the wrong guy on his
shoes. He becomes a ghost and begins
his new “life” with its new challenges and lessons. We think we know a lot about the people and
the world around us, but we really don’t.
In The Afterlife, Chuy
floats in and out of people’s lives learning what it truly means to be alive.
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1-2-3-4-5 Hook
1-2-3-4-5 Setting
1-2-3-4-5 Plot summary
1-2-3-4-5 Characters
1-2-3-4-5 Theme
1-2-3-4-5 Did not give away the end
(If the text was
informational text, include information about the topic, main idea, and key
details).
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I noticed about
the way this book was structured, or about the author’s craft and style.
The
book starts off quickly with Chuy’s death because the lessons of the book
come from his afterlife. There are two
specific things I like about Gary Soto’s writing style.
First,
the main character is believable. He
is a seventeen-year-old boy who acts and thinks the way I picture a boy
acting. He has girls on the
brain. This boy falls in love with all
the girls and continually hopes they will find him attractive. He is also
believable because, at seventeen, most people don’t think too much about the
value of life. Now that he is dead, we
can see how much he never noticed what he had when he was alive.
The
second thing I liked about Gary Soto’s style is his use of imagery. It is poetic at times, which makes sense
because Gary Soto does write poetry as well.
Here are two good examples: “ … and walked toward a group of young
trees where darkness was knitting the oncoming night.” Page 116 “Mr. Laird did look troubles, looked like
someone who had swallowed a dark could.” 64
The
story is told from the first person point of view, so we as the reader get to
experience the story as Chuy experiences it.
The events that happen are a surprise to us as well as we experience
Chuy’s confusion at his new afterlife.
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How the text is
organized?
Author’s word choice
Use of language
Writing style
100 Very well supported
95 Well supported
85 Supported adequately
75 Lacks supports
70 Not supported
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Reading this book
made me think about/wonder/connect to .
The
book gave me yet another way to think about what happens after we die because
nobody really knows. Do we go to a
Heaven? Is there a Hell? Do we become reincarnated as a snail? Do we have a
soul that exists after we die? Do we just click off out of existence? Since we don’t really know, we have to
focus our attention on what we do know: we are alive, and as long as we are
alive, we live in this world. The afterlife
will take care of itself.
For
me, the most interesting part of the book was when he first dies. This earthly world has its own rules, but
as Gary Soto explores in this book, the afterlife has its own rules. It was fun to imagine what life after death
would be like. For the most part, I
would be fine knowing that when I die, I would end up like Chuy.
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Choose one or two entries
from
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The most interesting/funniest/scariest scene was...because...
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A connection between this part of the book and what we are studying at
school is...which helps me understand that...
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This part of the book reminds me of (other text ,movie)because...which
helps me understand that...
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A character I identify with/don’t understand is...because...
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Something I learned about the world by reading this book is ... which
seems important because
100 Very well supported
95 Well supported
85 Supported adequately
75 Lacks supports
70 Not supported
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I would give this
book 1/2/3/4 stars because ...
I would give this book a 3 out of 4 because I am
comparing this book to the classics that I have read. The book is an easy read. The vocabulary is easy enough. As I said before the imagery is
delightful. The narrator sounds
immature to me, but that is the narrator.
This is a book for young readers, not adults. I am 45 years old and have lived a lot of
the life that Chuy hasn’t.
I recommend you read this book because it will make you
think about the value of life.
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Choose score
Provide clear reasons for
score
Cite specific evidence
from the text to support your opinion
100 Very well supported
95 Well supported
85 Supported adequately
75 Lacks supports
70 Not supported
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Grammar
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1-2-3-4-5 Perfect
grammar
1-2-3-4-5 Proper
use of quotes
1-2-3-4-5 Page
numbers for location of quotes
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