Reading Response Journals for Fiction Books

There are definitely some areas of my classroom and teaching that I need to "revamp" this year. One of them is to make the most of my guided reading lessons.  In the past I've always used a Reading Response Journal. Which I love because it is a place they can write in no matter what time of the day it is.  They can use it for homework to respond to an assigned read, center or independent reading time, and guided reading group. However, the problem I've always had is that the students spend much of the short time we have together preparing their page to write an answer.  This involves copying the question off of the white board, erasing, rewriting, erasing, rewriting...

So, I thought of a more organized solution.  I created these Reading Response Journal Prompts that the students can glue right into their journals.  The other great thing is that I can have these copied ahead of time and pull from them as I need.

My guided reading groups are typically divided into 4 different reading levels.  Therefore, the journal prompts I came up with are differentiated into 4 different levels to meet the needs of all of my students.

I also fit 3 to a page because I don't know anyone who doesn't want the opportunity to cut back on time spent at the copier.

Here is a little preview...

The prompts are broken down into 7 different categories or narrative elements. For example, characters, setting, plot, text connections, problem/solution, genre, and author's purpose.  I can assign the questions depending on what narrative element I'd like to focus on. 

For fun, I included an extra page with prompts inviting the students to go on a noun hunt/verb hunt/adjective hunt in their books.  This would be a great homework or center assignment.

I can't wait to get reading! How about you?