DIALECTICAL JOURNALS

Dia = across

Lect = read

A conversation between the writer and the text.

FORMAT

QUOTE RESPONSE

“He had shoes on-and yet it was only Friday.”

Pg 76

It must not be typical there to wear shoes on weekdays, especially during the summer.

INFERENCE

STEPS FOR COMPLETING AN ENTRY

1. Quote a passage on the left. Use ellipses if you do not record an entire sentence. Place quotation marks around the passage.

2. Record the page number ON THE LEFT below the passage.

3. Record your response in the right hand column. Record a THOROUGH response. (Complete sentences.)

4. Write the name of the type of response that you are making directly below the response, to the LEFT, in all capital letters.

5. Skip a space between each passage. Line up the top line of each response with the top line of the passage that you quoted. REFER TO SAMPLE ON THE NEXT PAGE.

Our dialectical journal focus:

Reading Strategies for Comprehension

Types of Response

• Connecting

• Prediction

• Denotation

• Inference

• Summarizing

• Reflection

TEXT

CONNECTIONS

WHY: Helps you link your brain up to what you are reading, so more of what you read makes sense, is meaningful, and is connected to what you already know.

Making Connections

TEXT CONNECTIONS

TEXT TO LIFE TEXT TO WORLD TEXT TO TEXT

Connect what you have read to specific personal experience.

Connect what you have read to a specific story you have experienced, whether literature, film, or television.

Connect what you have read to your prior knowledge about the world, including events and common human experience.

TEXT TO LIFE

Razma’s life reminds me of my own because my mother taught me how to cook in the kitchen just like Razma’s mother.

TEXT TO WORLD

I know that women are expected to wear the burka because religious fundamentalists feel it is wrong for a woman to reveal in public any part of her body except her eyes.

TEXT TO TEXT

Abdullah’s life working with his father reminds me of “To Kill a Mockingbird”. Many of the poor farmers’ kids in Scout’s class would come to school during the first week and then stop showing up because they had to stay home and work the farm.

Let’s practice.• Sheep provide wool, which can be made into clothing.• My sister sleepwalks and talks in her sleep.• In the book Old Yeller, Travis had to shoot his dog.• Sometimes I laugh so hard I cry.• Feng-shui is the art of moving furniture so that their arrangement will

provide the homeowner good fortune.• I know that snakes smell with their tongues.• I fell and put my tooth through my lip when I was a kid, too.• Arsenic is a type of poison.• That reminds me of the song Goodbye Earl, because they took justice

into their own hands, too.• Most people would get mad if their best friend tried to get credit for their

own idea.• The violin is a string instrument.• That is like in The Simpsons, when Homer travels with the Jim Rose

Circus Show, getting shot repeatedly in the belly with a cannonball.

FORMAT FOR TEXT CONNECTIONS

QUOTE RESPONSE

"Some of us pumped on our heads-mine's damp yet. See?"

Pg 74

When I’ve been really hot, I have splashed water on my face, or even poured it on my head, to cool down.

TEXT TO LIFE

MAKING PREDICTIONS

WHY:

It helps your brain set up expectations in order to organize information.

• What will the text be about?

• What will happen later in the text?

• What are different possible outcomes?

• What are you basing your predictions on?

• Are you predictions confirmed or disconfirmed?

• Do you need to revise your predictions based on what you have read?

Tell WHAT you think is going to occur and then tell WHY, using you prior knowledge and information from the text…

I THINK …. BECAUSE…

FORMAT FOR MAKING PREDICTIONS

QUOTE RESPONSE

“She told Tom to go with the kite-line and explore if he chose; but she implored him to come back every little while and speak to her; and she made him promise that when the awful time came, he would stay by her and hold her hand until all was over.”

Page 163

I think that Tom and Becky are eventually going to grow apart because they are both young, and people change and grow apart as the get older. Young love never lasts.

PREDICTION

DENOTATION

Denotation is the dictionary definition of a word. It is the direct meaning or set of meanings for a word. It is different from what is associated with a word.

DENOTATIONPrunes are dried plums.

CONNOTATIONOld people and constipated people eat prunes.

We associate prunes with these kinds of people.

MAKING PREDICTIONS FOR DENOTATION

Identify unfamiliar vocabulary, and make predictions for meaning, supporting your predictions with prior knowledge and evidence from the text (context clues).

Strategies to determine denotation

If we don’t know the actual definition of a word that we encounter in the text we can:

• Use context clues to determine and confirm meaning.

• Look for familiar spelling patterns and word parts (roots and affixes)

• Use text features to help you figure out word meaning.

WHY:

• If you don’t understand what the words mean, you can’t make meaning.

• You need to learn lots of new words and their meaning to keep up in school.

• Being good at determining word meaning in context means you don’t have to look it up in the dictionary all the time.

FORMAT FOR DE3TERMINING DENOTATION

QUOTE RESPONSE

“Spare the rod and spile the child, as the Good Book says. I'm a-laying up sin and suffering for us both, I know. He's full of the Old Scratch…”

Pg 75

I think Old Scratch means the Devil. Aunt Polly is talking about the bible, and I have heard people say “full of the devil”. I bet this means the same thing.

DENOTATION

MAKING INFERENCES

Making an inference, or inferring, is a logical process. It is a deductive process, in which you draw a conclusion based on prior knowledge instead of direct evidence.

HINTS

• Think of yourself as a detective who uses prior knowledge and evidence from the text to figure things out.

• It’s like knowing that if the author says that smoke is coming out of a chimney, that there is probably a fire in the fire place.

WHY:

It helps you figure out what the author is trying to tell you without being obvious about it. To INFER MEANING is to “get it”.

Ten Major Inference Types• LOCATION: “While we roared down the tracks, we could feel the bounce and sway.”

• AGENT (Occupation or pastime): “With clippers in one hand and scissors in the other, Chris was ready to begin the task.”

• TIME: “When the porch light burned out, the darkness was total.”

• ACTION: “Carol dribbled down the court and then passed the ball to Ann.”

• INSTRUMENT (Tool or Device): “With a steady hand, she put the buzzing device on the tooth.”

• CAUSE-EFFECT: “In the morning, we noticed that the trees were uprooted and homes were missing their rooftops.”

• OBJECT: “The broad wings were swept back in a ‘V’, and each held two powerful engines.”

• CATEGORY: “The Saab and Volvo were in the garage, and the Audi was out front.”

• PROBLEM-SOLUTION: “The side of his face was swollen, and his tooth ached.”

• FEELING-ATTITUDE: “While I marched past in the junior high band, my dad cheered and his eyes filled with tears.”

FORMAT FOR INFERENCES

QUOTE RESPONSE

“He had shoes on-and yet it was only Friday.”

Pg 76

It must not be typical there to wear shoes on weekdays, especially during the summer.

INFERENCE