I enjoyed reading this chapter! I learned many good habits I need to start in my own classroom as well as things we are already doing as a school. I share with my students how I love to read and how yes, I do choose to read for fun on the weekends! However, I have never taken it a step further to really share my reading with them. I like the idea of sharing the books I have read, am reading, or planning on reading. I believe this would help me connect with my students more as readers and it may even motivate some of my students to read more. If I can share all of the interesting books I am reading, they may realize that there are some awesome stories out there that they will be able to read some day! I would love to put some time to the side every now and then to have a talk about the books we are reading for fun and share our books with each other.
As Routman discussed tracking her reading, I was thinking how our school is doing this for their book logs. Just as she stated, tracking pages read daily can be tedious, but tracking books we have read after we finish them can give us a sense of accomplishment. This is exactly what I have seen happen with our students tracking their books after they finish them. I cannot count how many times I have had students run up to me to show me how many books are on their book log. They are very proud of their accomplishments in reading and it motivates them to read even further. It even has me thinking that maybe I need to start a reading record of my own! This would be another great thing I could share with my students as my list grows as well.
I definitely agree that sharing our lives as readers is beneficial. We are like celebrities to them sometimes, so if we show them how much we like reading, then they may see the good in it as well. Even reading books that they might like can help us to match the right book to the right reader which will provide some reluctant readers the motivation to read. This is especially true as we are then enabled to have conversations about the book with the student in deep and meaningful ways.
ReplyDeleteIt sounds like you got some great ideas from this chapter--including book talks! What a great idea to let our naturally social children (as we all are, being humans!) socialize over books! I am thrilled to hear your school book log is off to a successful start!
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