Robin Wright - Routman Ch. 3 - Share Your Reading Life - Blog Post #6

     This time of year was an excellent time for me to read Routman's Chapter 3, Share Your Reading Life.  It's cold, the students are tired, the snow fall we received, or lack of, was disappointing, and spring break seems to be a very long way off.  Independent reading, although still enjoyable to most of my students, has lost a bit of its appeal.  What a great time to share my reading life with my students to jump start their interest in reading again.  Routman mentions throughout the chapter the importance of making our own thinking visible to our students and modeling the practices that we use.
     In the Try It, Apply It sections, I was encouraged to know that some of the suggestions Routman recommended were already being applied in my classroom.  Strategies such as, sharing with a partner their favorite book, or part of a book, having a bin within the classroom library labeled "Teachers Choice" and using notebooks to record their reactions to books they are currently reading.  Yet, I have noticed that my classroom library has sadly not been paid much attention lately. Routman suggests bringing in books that I am reading to share with my students. However, I don't believe that my third graders would be very interested in Reading Essentials or any of the other professional texts I am currently reading.  He did spark an idea that I believe will help bring enthusiasm back to my classroom.  My plan is to bring in my favorite book when I was a child and my favorite books that I read to my own children and loaning these to our classroom library.  I also want to encourage my students to "shop" in our classroom library and create a bulletin board with books that the children would recommend to others.  I am hoping to create book clubs and conduct author studies within my classroom.
     I did find this chapter to be helpful with sparking some ideas to encourage my students to keep reading. I most related with Routman's belief that requiring reading logs, counting pages or updating reading records are not effective.  When these things are required of our students, reading often becomes a chore that causes children to dislike reading.  If we want children to become life long readers, then the act of reading should be a pleasure, not a chore.