Thoughtful M&M's

I have this new idea. Well, it's new to me. I want to try to have you all explain yourselves without words-- not all the time, but sometimes. One area that I've been curious about is how you all are feeling about SSR (Silent Sustained Reading). To do this, we took some M&M's and placed them in either an abstract or concrete fashion to represent how we're feeling about SSR. Here are some samples with a little explanation of what the presenter said about their design:

This student originally designed a question mark, because he wasn't sure what he thought. As his thinking process extended, he ultimately formed his M&M's into a flower. His rationale for the flower shape is that he feels he is "blooming" with knowledge because of SSR.




At first I thought that this student did not feel that he was benefitting from SSR. Then he explained that SSR time makes him feel tired. This is totally understandable. I know some people who need to read in order to fall asleep at night. I guess that my advice is to stick with the SSR experience and try to select books that are going to keep you alert. We'll check back to see how this student feels later this year.




This student explained that she's liking SSR because she feels like her reading level and her knowledge in general are going "up", hence the arrow next to her smiley face.






Thank you for your participation in this activity. Though I only posted a few of your responses here, I have all of your photos in my iphoto and will use them in my reflection of SSR as the year progresses.

We read to page 141 in Speak and chose our new words for letter number three. We'll focus more on this next letter after the long weekend.