The Reader Response Notebook: Teaching toward Agency, Autonomy, and Accountability

The reader response notebook (RRN) is a tried-and-true tool in elementary and middle school classrooms. However, teachers and students often express frustration with this tool. Responses can read as though students are just going through the motions, with little evidence of deep comprehension. With this book, teacher educator and consultant Ted Kesler breathes new life into the RRN by infusing this work with three key practices: encouraging responses to reflect design work, using a variety of writing tools; expanding what counts as text, including popular culture texts that are important in students’ lives outside of school; and making the RRN an integral part of a community of practice. Providing myriad examples of student work and explicit teaching in classrooms, Kesler, with a community of grade school teachers and students, demonstrates how students’ creative responses lead to deep comprehension of diverse texts and ultimately help them to develop their literate identities. This book colourfully illustrates how to teach students toward agency, autonomy, and accountability in their reader response notebooks.

About the Author :
Ted Kesler taught grades K, 1, 3, and 4 for 13 years in the New York City public schools. In 1996-97, he was the featured teacher in a year-long series of articles in The New York Times called "Class 3-223: Mr. Kesler's Struggle," by reporter Jacques Steinberg (nine articles in total!). In 1998, he received the prestigious Bank Street College Early Childhood Teacher of the Year Award. In 2001, he earned my National Board of Professional Teaching Standards license as a middle grades generalist. In the fall of 2001, he left the classroom and worked as a staff developer for the Reading and Writing Project of Teachers College until 2007. During this time, he also completed my doctoral degree in Curriculum and Teaching. He was a contributing author of Raising the Quality of Personal Narratives (Heinemann, 2006). In the fall, 2007, he joined the Elementary and Early Childhood Department of Queens College of the City University of New York and is now associate professor, focusing in literacy education. He is also director of the MAT 1-6 pre-service programs and currently teaches courses in literacy and children's literature to Masters degree pre-service and in-service students. He is the author of books for teachers and teacher educators, including The Reader Response Notebook: Teaching Towards Agency, Autonomy, and Accountability (NCTE, 2018). His articles have appeared in Language Arts, The Reading Teacher, the Elementary School Journal, the ​Journal of Literacy Research, Reading and Writing Quarterly, and Children's Literature in Education, among other journals. He continues to do staff development, teach institutes, and give keynote speeches as a literacy consultant in schools around the country.