First Weeks (Expose them to the Structure)

Day One - [Transparency - being clear, open, and straightforward. Give an example of someone you think is transparent, according to this definition. Is this a quality you like? Why or why not?] Rules/Course Requirements/Quotes and Happiness Project/Syllabus
Curiosity, the engine of readers: students will note observations about me and about the classroom.
[Exit - How did I model transparency today? Is there such thing as too much transparency?]
HW: Book questionnaire

Day Two [Curiosity - how would you define curiosity? What makes people curious about something and not curious about other things?] -
Why take English class?/What would you like to do in English? (see First Day post)
What do you like to read?/How do you decide what to read?/What energizes you?

They will report out findings about curiosity. They will write questions they have. Then, they will interview each other, using questions they come up with. Takeaway: books are like real life and we need to be aware of how curious we are about them. Every student must answer: What are you good at? How do you decide what to read? What do you like to read (including websites)? What interests you/favorite subjects? [ask WHY after every question you ask]

[Exit - What did you learn as a result of the questions you asked today? What did you learn about curiosity?]

Day Three [Recall - What does it mean to recall something? Recall what we did in class yesterday. What helped you do it?] - Anticipation/Connection and Summarization practice: I will begin the year providing students with questions and background information to stimulate their curiosity about a book. Then I will ask them to summarize some short stories, perhaps Thank You Ma'am by Langston Hughes and a tougher one is A Sound of Thunder by Ray Bradbury - collect their summaries; SSR Books. I will collect the summaries for assessment.
[Exit- What are strategies for plot recall of stories? How do your disposition/emotions play a part in recall?]
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In the next week, we will have an introduction to critical reading. There will be two parts:

[Annotate - to add notes to, gloss, interpret, comment, mark up. Annotate this Facebook post. Then try to categorize what you're interested in. Ex: underlining an unfamiliar word]
1.) simply talk to the text. Make notes about what stands out to you (do a demo - Facebook feed, Huffington post, movie review)
[Exit - How is annotation a reflection of your interests? How is it influenced by background knowledge/schema?]

[Strategies - what is a strategy? What are strategies you know in areas besides English like - math, sports, science, chess, and nail painting?]
2.) I will ask analysis questions of the short stories that are reading strategies, which the students will name.  They will try to label which strategy best matched their natural interests.
[Exit ticket: what strategy did you use most naturally?  why? use it to reflect a little deeper on the reading.]

[Evaluate - did you like the stories we read yesterday? Why or why not?]
The next day, we will return to summarizing and focus on EVALUATING. Having assessed their skills, we will go over summarization tips, perhaps play a game.
[Exit ticket: what makes you like or dislike a story? What did you learn about your preferences?]