We read pages 8-11 next and used the same strategy of adding one sticky note per page with the main event or detail from that page.
On page 8, we also discussed the word cabled and how it went with the word/concept of telegraph from our reading yesterday. Below are pictures of my thoughts and stickies for these pages. One thing I kept having to remind and ask is "what else?" because some of the students weren't going DEEP enough with what they thought was the main event or detail. For example they would write "the refugees cheered", but I really wanted them to get to the root of WHY the refugees were cheering.
Today we finished reading the story (pages 12-16) again adding sticky notes to each page. Once we discussed them all we transitioned from discussing events to discussing characters and the traits that we can infer from the story. We used this chart below to help us. I printed the same chart on each side of the paper and used one side for Sugihara and the other side for Sugihara's son, the narrator.
The blue below was for Sugihara:
To tie it all together, we brought the discussion back to heroes. We talked about Sugihara being a "normal" person who helped so many even when he wasn't even supposed to. I asked them to flip through the book and find specific instances that qualified Sugihara as a hero. Each student came up with several and explained why what they chose meant HERO.
This story was SO WELL RECEIVED by ALL of my students!!! They loved it and each day came in so eager to find out some more. I found some extra information on Sugihara because they had so many questions about his life after the story ended. I was so happy with their work and interest/effort level!!