Personal Responses Year Nine

What do I have to do? You have to write at least 4 personal responses this year in order to get a reading certificate. This is in conjunction with completing your reading log, by recording every book you read this year. You must remember to keep track of this. If you are using your device as a journal, you must print your personal responses and store them in your clear file. They must all be kept in one place.

What is the point of a personal response? To discuss your OPINIONS about a book you have read. Opinion= what you think about the book. Therefore there is no right or wrong answer- as long as you can support your opinion with evidence.

What should my response include? At the start you must include the title and the author as a heading. A short description of the text. TWO personal opinions about the text- see the next slide for paragraph structure. Overall 3 paragraphs- one description of the text, two opinions.

Structuring a response paragraph Structuring a personal response is just like structuring an essay paragraph. Topic sentence: this is where you state your opinion about an aspect of the book. Evidence: You need to give a quote (preferably) or details of something which happens in the book which supports your opinion. Explanation: You then need to explain how your evidence supports your opinion. Link: Link your opinion about the book to your own life or the wider world. How can you relate to the story or character etc? What issues in society or the world did this make you think about? Did this change your thoughts about something that happens/is happening in the world?

Some sentence stems… These sentence stems can be useful to help you to express your opinions in your topic sentence. I enjoyed…(the book) I admired…(the character) I disliked…(the book, a character, something that happened etc.) I was inspired by…(a character, the story, something that happened etc.) I was surprised… I was frustrated by… There are of course, plenty of other opinions you could have, but this should help you to get started.

An Example: Wonder I admired the character Summer in the novel because she was accepting. Summer demonstrated that she was accepting on August’s first day of school when she came to sit at his table at lunch when no other students would. Summer stayed sitting with August, even when her friends encouraged her not to. This showed that Summer was accepting because she did not judge August because of his appearance. She wanted him to feel welcome at school and so she sat with him so he would be included and have a friend to talk to. This is admirable, because all other students were ignoring August because of the way he looked. Summer helped August, even though her friends did not want her to. This made me think about the negative effect that judging people on the appearance can have. I realised that if you exclude someone because of the way they look, you may never get to know them and they could be a really interesting person.

Deconstruction… I admired the character Summer in the novel because she was accepting. This clearly expresses an opinion using “I” and tells us WHY they have that opinion.

Deconstruction Summer demonstrated that she was accepting on August’s first day of school when she came to sit at his table at lunch when no other students would. Summer stayed sitting with August, even when her friends encouraged her not to. These details from the text give an example of Summer acting admirably by being accepting of August. It would be better if this included a quote.

Deconstruction This showed that Summer was accepting because she did not judge August because of his appearance. She wanted him to feel welcome at school and so she sat with him so he would be included and have a friend to talk to. This is admirable, because all other students were ignoring August because of the way he looked. Summer helped August, even though her friends did not want her to. This explains HOW the example shows Summer being accepting and WHY this is admirable.

Deconstruction This made me think about the negative effect that judging people on the appearance can have. I realised that if you exclude someone because of the way they look, you may never get to know them and they could be a really interesting person. This explains how the person’s opinion has made them think about the way they act in their life- linking to the wider world.

When you have completed a personal response… You must print it if it is online. You must give me the printed copy or your journal so I can give you feedback.