Reading Thought Trails

Here's how we keep track of our thoughts in Reading Workshop.  I'm reading to the class the novel Wonder by R.L. Palacio.  At regular intervals, students jot down, using mostly a bullet point style, their reactions, predictions, questions and observations on post-its that have been pre-positioned in their notebooks.  

We have pages and post-its for characters, setting, figures of speech, conflicts/solutions etc. These thoughts and notes are used for frequent discussions as a whole group or with partners.  Later these thought trails will assist in "writing long" about various themes we've identified.    This technique will be used through out the year.  Students will post their thoughts on the actual pages of books they are reading independently, or with partners.  Once those books are finished, the post-it thought trails are removed from the book and placed on notebook pages as you see above.