Little by little I’ve been working my way through Read Side By Side, which is designed to help students with close reading and stamina. I had the opportunity to see Sarah Collinge and Bethany Robinson at the New Mexico International Reading Association conference earlier this year, and their talk was compelling. Not sure how much of this I can take back into my classroom with Read 180 and all, but maybe it’s something the other teachers in my department can use.

Fast forward to last week. I’m reading Razorhurst by Justine Larbalstier. I picked it up because it was in the stack on my nightstand, and I’m making a concerted effort to read books that I own. I’m a couple of chapters in and I have no idea what’s going on. I read the blurb, but didn’t really think too much about it (much like my students, I imagine). So I decided to do the exercise from Read Side By Side to see if it can help me out at all. I didn’t use the graphic organizer, just stickies on the inside of my book. Then I threw them up on Snapchat (and  then on Instagram because you can’t embed snaps).

Read Razorhurst last week. This isn’t a #stickynotereviews, but it models the thinking I’m trying to help my students have as they go into reading a new book. Music is “Sweeter Vermouth” by Kevin MacLeod of incomptech.com. Used under the CC 3.0 attribution license. #bookstagram

A video posted by Eli (@thebooksupplier) on Mar 28, 2016 at 1:31pm PDT

//platform.instagram.com/en_US/embeds.js

So it really helped me figure out who’s who in Razorhurst, and I was much more engaged in the story after that.

What do you do when you start reading something and find yourself confused really quick?