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Although middle schoolers know how to read, it is important to develop critical reading skills that make reading both more effective as well as more enjoyable.

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Because of our review and practice with figurative language, we are practicing these three habits the most this week.

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Students picked an example of figurative language from the two stories we read and illustrated it. I ran out of time before I uploaded them all, but here are many samples.

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Finding Figurative Language and Thinking About Belonging in a Short Story

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Finding Figurative Language and Thinking About Belonging in a Short Story

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"How to Eat a Guava" from Esmerelda Santiago's When I Was Puerto Rican

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"How to Eat a Guava" from Esmerelda Santiago's When I Was Puerto Rican

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Note Taking Form and Questions for "How to Eat a Guava"

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Note Taking Form and Questions for "Eleven"

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Click on the image to see examples kids found in their free reading.

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Students' Original Figurative Language CD

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Students' Original Figurative Language CD

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Students' Original Figurative Language AB

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Students' Original Figurative Language AB

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This week's focus is on reviewing the four different types of figurative language we looked at last week, finding examples in reading, and creating our own figurative language. We read two short stories and identified the different types of figurative language in the stories. This involved discussing and practicing highlighting, annotating, and note taking. We also thought about the habits of strong readers and this week mainly focused on three skills: visualization, appreciating language, and building vocabulary. To visualize, we drew pictures of an example of figurative language. Our discussions focused on how the authors used their words to paint pictures. We finished the week by writing stories that highlighted the figurative language methods we have been studying. You can see the assignments and some samples of the students' work by clicking on the posts in the columns to the right.

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We went over the writing assignment in class and Jenn modeled how she might approach the assignment by coming up with different ideas that fit the prompts and then seeing if there is interesting details to write about. Students then dove in and did their own brainstorming and writing. Although I've only just started reading people's stories, I'm hungry as one student described baking sour dough bread and another cinnamon toast. I am off to find some butter...