Pre-Reading as Schole, or a Mid-Year Update on My Reading Journal

Happy Easter! I hope you had a blessed weekend.

I'd like to start off the week with another peek into my Reading Journal in honor of my chat with Brandy and Pam on Schole Sisters about pre-reading as schole and how keeping can transform your teacher prep time. (Go have a listen!)

In case you missed my last post on this personal keeping assignment, here it is! I explained what I keep in this particular notebook, why I started it, and what products I'm using.  I also shared inside the first half of my book.

The short version: this is part of my pre-reading for AmblesideOnline Year 6. I keep other notes too (more teacher prep stuff like lists of proper nouns, notes, and potential discussion/exam questions), but this is a creative twist on a commonplace book that invites me to adopt the posture of a student as I do my weekly prep work.

I can't tell you how this has revolutionized the way I think about my weekly pre-reading. By adding elements of keeping, little by little, over the course of the past couple years, I have seen so much fruit in my engagement with the material and with my students.  It has made my teacher prep time much more enjoyable, ordering my attitude toward those tasks from busy mama trying to keep up to delighted co-learner.

And besides that, it's just a lot of fun. :)  I'll definitely be keeping another of these next year. And every year!

Just to be clear: it is not as if a notebook like this (or keeping of any kind, really) is required for pre-reading to be schole. But if you're a box-checker like me and find that as much as you LOVE the books, your temptation is just to "get it done" and not fully engage, then maybe this strategy will help you as much as it has helped me.

We're not halfway through Term 3, so it's an awkward time to peek in: I'm only five pages from the end! I'll probably pop some final pages up during some end-of-the-year round-up.

For now, here is a look through my pages from where I left off last time, as well as a look back at some in-progress pages from that first batch that I have added to since then (like my timeline and maps)...

in progress :)

I hope that gives a sense of the variety that this format has enabled and the organic approach that is possible with this assignment. Adding little by little each week has really created something meaningful to me.

And I talked all about this on the Schole Sisters chat, but just a reminder: none of these drawings are out of my own head. They're all "drawing copywork": finding a drawing I like in one of our books and copying it into my book. And I have a personal goal to have something colored and something drawn on each page since my default mode is just ink + words.

Side note: I have been excited by all the moms who have told me they have started keeping a book like this after reading my post at the start of the year! You can see a couple here: MacKenzie's at BRC Banter and Arenda's at The Upcast Eye. If you keeping a pre-reading commonplace like this, let me know! I'd love to take a peek. I'm currently scavenging ideas for next year's iteration. I am always on the hunt for fresh inspiration. :)