Crazy English Teacher Epiphany of Sorts

I just had a sort of realization. I'm sitting here editing my First Benchmark for my MA and I am re-analyzing some of the baseline reading logs. I realized that many students were giving opinions without stating what caused that opinion - they weren't giving any textual evidence. As I told them they need to push their thinking further, I realized that not only am I trying to improve their reading comprehension in that they need to explain opinions, make predictions, explain predictions, ask questions, attempt to answer questions, etc., they are also working on Literary Response and Analysis!!!

The other day I was talking with a coworker, who said she was having trouble getting her students to cite evidence in their essays. They were making opinions but weren't backing them up with evidence. As I was talking with her, I was thinking that I hadn't really been working on that and I was really doing a diservice to my students. Well, I've suddenly realized that when my students do their independent reading and fill out their text logs, they are responding to literature and are giving their opinions and backing them up with textual evidence. When they write, "I think that Mary is really snobby because of the way she is treating her friends. If I were her friend, and she ignored me at the mall, I would smack her," they are making a claim about a character, backing it up with textual evidence and are even relating to the book. I feel a little better about my teaching now that I've realized this. What they are doing is practicing analysis skills that they will use in writing essays and even in discussing literature when we read a book aloud or in their high school futures.

Now, what I need to do is (1) make my students aware of what they are doing and (2) connect this with a Response to Literature essay. Ahhh, I feel a tiny bit better.