Katrina Hankins Blog Post #1-- Routman Ch 3 Sharing Your Reading Life

When I think about all of the things we are trying to do at our school, it always comes back to the same thing.  We want our students to love learning which includes active reading, writing, researching, and engineering.  The engagement we seek for our students isn’t just for an evaluation but for validation that we are truly working with our students in the course of life and making the learning authentic and long lasting.  It all starts with love.

We’ve talk about creating a welcoming environment, accepting each student, and getting to know them well.  Obviously, that begins the process of bonding that makes sharing in a classroom a transformative experience.  Routman focuses on sharing your reading life in Chapter 3 as an important part of this learning experience.  Every summer I make a stack of books I want to read.  Actually it becomes 2 stacks as I gear some of my reading toward professional books but the other is a stack of children’s literature.  I look forward to reading books that are popular as well as favorites that have been forgotten.  I read these with the hope of finding the right hands to fill when school starts back up again.  Then we can share the excitement, not just a new book to read, but also the journey that takes place within the pages.  A journey that I’ve already made possible for them just by reading and sharing a book.

The sharing that takes place has to be real and continuous.  To me, there is always another book to read which can be so exciting. On page 26, Routman promotes this approach through two questions:  What is your “now” book? What is your “next” book?  This creates the momentum that as readers we are never done.  We have so much more to experience through the books in our stack.  Then as others in our class share their reading lives, there is even more motivation to keep reading.  The teacher is the one who can inspire this excitement mostly by sharing her life as a reader herself. 

If I could I would take my students to Barnes & Noble to rummage around until we each found a favorite.  Then I would buy every one so that each child could have it always and share it with a friend when they were done.  I can imagine them saying, “Just make sure you give it back, it’s one of my favorites.”  Then the next day the classroom would ebb and flow from excited chatter about the books they are about to read to the quiet of complete absorption and then back again when they read a part that begs to be shared.  All this would be the natural workings of our own class book club just as Routman suggests on page 30.  But an extravagant field trip funded by a wealthy teacher is not a prerequisite for such joy.  Our weekly visits to the media center to fill our book bags for free can provide the same euphoria when part of an environment that celebrates the life of a reader and their experiences as modeled and facilitated by the teacher.

Don’t know how you would inspire such a reading experience?  Routman generously offers many practical suggestions on pages 31 and 32 specifically.  If none of the options work for you, then maybe a small start would be better for you.  Read one book that is grade level appropriate and share the excitement whole group or with just one student.  Your sharing time after Independent Reading time can be an inspirational time or encouragement from just one student can start the process as well. 

Finally, Routman suggests a reading record which is often a killjoy for many of us.  I have to say that even though I have struggled in the past, I have adopted her approach of using a notebook.  For some reason it gives me just the right amount of support as a reader.  I jot down the title and author for each month along with a few notes so I remember the book since my memory doesn’t always serve me well.  Obviously, whatever system you use to record the reading in your class, the purpose should be to document the life of the reader instead of a chore.  As a reflective piece it can be so powerful to see where they have been and where they are going.  It is a record that can help us to know them better and encourage them one reader to another.  The record is to encourage reading, not kill it so make it a simple part of the process so that it supports them in the growing and sharing process.