Treq into better journals... TELL Tell the story again or summarize it RELATE Form a relationship between the story and your personal experience or things you have thought about. This is a very personal relationship. EVALUATE Evaluate the motives of the author or the characters of the story. This is thinking and writing about why the story was written; why it was written the way it was; why the characters, scenes, and description s are presented in the way they are. These three bears, Ma, Pa, and the kid made some porridge--I guess it’s like cereal or something--for breakfast. It was too hot to eat so they took a walk while it cooled. This little blonde girl with cute curls was taking a walk in the woods. She saw a cabin and went in- -even though no one was home! And she sure made a mess. I used to really hate hot cereal when I was a kid. My mother used to make me eat it because “it was good for me.” Every once in a while I could make myself throw-up after I ate it. I always felt like I had won a little victory after that. I found it interesting that this author used a girl to be the one who got in trouble. I like that in a way because boys are always being blamed for getting into more trouble than girls. It was refreshing to see a girl who did something wrong for a change.

Treq into better journals... QUESTION Ask questions about the story. Actually write them down and answer them based on what you have read. The questions you write and answer can help to clarify confusing or difficult ideas. SYNTHESIZE IDEAS Relate other things you have read to what you are currently reading. Text relationships can occur between chapters in a book, between different books, between a book and a newspaper or magazine article. One you identify a relationship, explain it. SPECULATE Speculate about the impact of what you have read on the larger community. You might think and write about the impact of this text on your school, friend group, or even the state or the world. You might speculate about the impact of this text on others who read it in the future. I wonder if the author was trying to get a moral message across to the reader at this point. You know he mentioned that the girl went in the house with no one home. That really isn’t considered proper, and in this day and age probably not even safe. Besides who, even three bears, would go out and leave their door unlocked? I wonder if three, as in The Three Bears, is a symbolic number? Other books I have read present groups of three people or things as well. Some that come to mind are The Three Pigs, Three Musketeers, and The Brothers Karamazov. It seems to me that this would have been a very different story if the girl had just left the cabin when she discovered no on was home. But then again, the lesson here seems to be an important one for all of us. This girl went into an unoccupied house and messed it up. Sometime we go into other peoples’ lives and mess them up. Countries often go after other countries, like us right now in Serbia. Would it be better if we minded our own business more? Maybe we need to work on being kind and considerate when we enter other people’s lives.