Conversations With 5th Graders About Reading

We all know how much 5th graders love to talk...about everything except what you want them to!  My group is pretty good and we have had some great conversations.  Now that they've been with me awhile and they're "used" to me, they seem to be getting bored.  I found this on TPT (of course).

They are these great cards by iHeartLiteracy.  You can download this product here.  They are Reading Comprehension Sentence Starters that come in 6 categories; Predict, Connect, Clarify, Question, Comment, and Synthesize.  I used them as conversation starters to discuss what we are reading.  Currently, we are reading this:

This text is from Reading A-Z.  Some of the cards don't really go with this non-fiction piece so we set them aside.  They were a great way to get my students to really think about and reflect on what we are reading.  Some of them had difficulty with what the card was asking them.  I thought that was actually a good thing because they would have had difficulty with it as a test question.  Talking about it while reading allowed us to address what the difficulty issue was.  We helped each other respond should someone be stuck.  I was happy with the result.  It can be a quick activity and be a nice break away from our typical discussion!