Some students have asked about online reading and if it can be included in their reading journals. The answer, of course, is “yes, but”. Yes, but it needs to follow a formula to be legitimate. Below you will see an example shown in class.
If a student is say, reading online fan fiction on a site such as Wattpad they can apply a formula to tabulate how many “pages” they have read. But first, the student needs to establish their reading rate. To do this, look at the example below. In this example Suzy read for 30 in one sitting and found that she was reading 25 pages in that 30 min. block of time. So she follows the steps below…
- Take the amount of pages you read divided by the time it took to read them.
- In this case that is 25/30
- Then take the quotient as your reading rate.
- In this case the number was 0.83…
- This means that Suzy reads about 0.83 pages per min.
- Then take the amount of time you were reading on Wattpad
- Let’s say Suzy reads for 40 min on Wattpad tonight
- Take the time you read times your reading rate.
- In this case Suzy then takes 40 X 0.83 = 33.2
- This means Suzy read the equivalent of 33.2 pages online tonight (or 33 pages)
- Now record that in your reading journal
However, reading novels and other actual “books” MUST be the key focus in your reading journal. Your goal is to read 20 books this year. Also, please note that online reading such as Facebook, Snapchat etc. is not “reading time” as it much of it is scrolling, looking at pictures, and does not relate to the focus of reading and understanding literature. “Reading time” is time spent sitting with fiction or non-fiction books, focusing on the craft of written language.
Today we are going to begin to write a mystery story. To do this you must first pre-plan all the action. In a way, you will need to “reverse engineer” the story by working backwards from the end. This allows you to plant all the necessary clues so youur story can grow over time and lead the reader on an adventure.
