Response to Literature

In Literacy, the students worked on writing a response to literature essay. It was suggested in the Trophies curriculum guide to use this type of writing with the story for this week. The story, In the Days of Kind Adobe, is a folktale and the students wrote about whether or not they thought it was a good example of a folktale. I found it very satisfying to work with the students on this assignment. We started by discussing the characteristics of a folktale with the whole class before we read the story. Then I had the students use post-it notes while we read about places that they saw these elements in the story. The next day I showed them an example of a response to literature essay for a fable that we had also read. After discussing it, the students started their pre-writing using a graphic organizer that I had made. I met individually with students as they went through this process to make sure they were on the right track. I really loved working with students in this individual way while they were writing. It was a way to assess their understanding and assist students that needed extra help.