Independent Reading Portfolio

Agenda Who has an Ode draft? IRP outline What do you have to submit? What do your Making Connections entries look like? Who has done one? READING TIME

IRP Menu

For Each Book For each book you must choose 4 different entries to do. You cannot do the same entries for each book. Each Friday, except for today, we will do a mini lesson on a particular concept that you can transform into an entry for your IRP.

Current Book Justify Entry Wordstudy Entry Making Connections Entry All of your entries must be typed and printed and submitted together. Inferring (next Friday) Entry

Justify Entry This will be the first entry that is submitted for your IRP. Note that it is not on the menu, but it will still be marked and will be necessary for the other books that you move onto for this project. How did you find the book? Outline the Hook Outline the Challenge

Short Sample Justify Entry I have chosen to read The Lowland by Jhumpa Lahiri for the month of September. I discovered this book much like the other books I have read- by searching the aisles of Chapters. I had never heard of this author before, but the graphics initially pulled me in and it happened to be alongside other wonderful authors on the shelf. Nobody recommended this book to me, save for the “National Bestseller” claim on the front of the book. What initially hooked me about this book was its setting. As I read the back of the book I learned that the story begins in 1960’s India and then goes to America and back again. I have always loved reading books about India, but this timespan is new for me. It also said that it was a “family saga” which I have enjoyed in the past, such as A Fine Balance and Middlesex. I also read the first paragraph and enjoyed the vocabulary and initial introduction into the world: “After the monsoon the ponds would rise so that the embankment built between them could not be seen”(1). I haven’t met the characters yet, but I am anxious to. The challenge that I face with this novel is the subject matter. As stated I have read family drama books set in India, but I do not know much of the 1960’s in India and I know that the political unrest will probably feature. I will need to do a fair amount of research when it comes to the background events of this novel. There will also be a vocabulary challenge as I noticed on the first page that there are Hindi and Islamic terms that I am unfamiliar with and will have to problem solve.

Making Connections Format Choose a specific passage from your novel. Copy it out. Provide context for the passage- briefly tell me what has happened leading up to this point. Explain what kind of connection you are making (text to self, text to world, text to text) So what? How did making this connection help you to understand the book even better? How could it help other people to understand?

For today… Make sure you have Justify and Wordstudy You can work on the Making Connections entry if you are not done or if you need to adjust what it looks like. You can read All of the IRP materials and prompts are on my website.