Stop and Jot

Stop and Jot. At one point, I wanted to scream. Like literally scream at the top of my lungs. Why? I didn't have an effective way to do Stop and Jot. I teach first graders, and they are NO WHERE close to being able to do alone and/or when they get to certain parts of their book. They will literally do it at EVERY SINGLE PAGE no matter how many times I say NOOOOOOOOO- and then die a little inside.

Then...I had an idea. My idea came from being able to sit with my kids and get a way to have a formative assessment on the kids. I created a mini book. My kids did not give me enough spiral notebooks in the beginning of the year to allow me to make 20 notebooks. That is how the mini-books were born.

The mini-books just have the title of the book that we are reading, the words Stop and Jot, and then a cute image. I stapled it to 5 lined pages so that I can just have them answer questions when I am ready for them. These are about 1/4 of a sheet of computer paper/lined paper. It all fit really nicely together.

Here is the stack of them waiting for the kids to start using them. At the end of the week, I am able to look at their book and determine if they understood the question and answered it correctly. Then I will be able to have a formative assessment on the kids. Hopefully, my next post will allow me to show you what I do with the formative assessment and how I collect the formative assessment. If you would like a master copy of this and editable then leave a comment so I can email the master copy to you!!

Enjoy!!