monitoring comprehension

During one of our Blood on the River lessons, students completed a character map about Samuel that included four sections: how the character acts and feels, how others feel about the character, what the character looks like, and where the character lives. Students wrote their answers based on what we had read and discussed in previous chapters. It was important to have students understand that they were supposed to think about both how Samuel feels and acts. In order to understand how Samuel feels and to understand how others feel about him, students have to interpret his actions and the reactions from other characters. I helped facilitate this understanding through discussions during previous chapters. On the section about how the character looks, I gave my students a fair amount of creative freedom. The book does not describe in detail how Samuel looks, but it does say about how old he is. So, students must make inferences about how someone about their age might look.