Nurture Readers' Joy

 Let's face it. We love stories. We tell them. We watch them. We share them. We laugh and wonder over them. Stories move us to action and to tears. We may read with our ears, with our eyes, or even with all of our senses while playing in immersive worlds. Our human love of stories does not always translate into a love of reading the printed word. 

Seeding students' love for books and the printed world of story, takes time, intention and a whole lot of practice.  I am just beginning that practice with seventh graders. Here are 6 moves I make to nurture readers' joy. 

1. I use excerpts from books from our Sunshine State readers list for this year in most of my initial assessments and strategy introductions at the start of the year (Writing that Shows, Letter to Students). Those excerpts give me a chance to book talk books I've read over the summer in order to introduce them to kiddos.  We start a conversation about books during the first days of school. 

P didn't write about books when he wrote back, but S did. I learn a lot about students as readers and writers from the first things they write in my class. 

2. Do a book pass or book tasting to introduce books to kids. This activity has gone by many names in the thirty years I've been teaching: speed dating, book tasting, etc. This year, we went to the media center. I sat students in their regular groups of 4 and I put a book bin of 9-12 books on each table. 

I began by talking about the word buffet  and the buffet at Basilico in Singapore (it's cheese room is pictured on the slide). Then I invited students talk about how the media center is like a buffet. Once we shared, I demonstrated how to preview a book and how to take a few notes for our reader selves so that we could remember the titles when we were next looking for a book to read. Then I released students to preview the books in their small groups. Once they'd looked at and taken note of 5-7 of the titles I had curated for their groups, they were able to free range through the stacks in the media center.

3. We will kick off independent reading in class on Monday. I will give students 8-10 minutes of reading time at the start of class. Reading is our bell work, our do now, our default whenever we finish something early. I am teaching that routine right now and I know that it will not be well rooted for a many weeks. Short bursts of reading keep kids engaged. I have found that if I allow too much time for reading, especially when I do not yet know the readers in my room, many kids fall asleep or disengage. 

Once rooted the reading routine will begin producing joy, but that takes months, sometimes until January even. 

4. Instead of keeping track on a share a google sheet as  I've done in the past with older students.  I will  record their progress on anecdotal notes I keep in GoodNotes 5 as I confer with them. For our first session though, I used Nanci Atwell's Status of the Class: called names, gathered titles and page numbers. I  praised students progress who surprised me by having books they were in the middle of already. This formative check in is quick, about a minute to call and jot. Sharing that way once a week, creates space for students to hear a variety of book choices and see each others' excitement. Plus, if I am the one monitoring, I can make sure we  read more than we count or account. Reading is not accounting after all. 

5. Weekly, I will ask students to write about what they have read in their Readers' Writers' Notebook (RWN). This practice I learned from Linda Reif, though the title has morphed into ELA Journal at present. This quarter I invite students to write using these prompts. There is a time and a place for prompted and unprompted writing in our class. I prompt my readers who are writing about their independent reading because our prompts help us practice what we are learning in class. 

6. Once we've begun reading and writing about what we're reading, I begin conferring with the kids. Our first conferences about their reading have many purposes--here they are described in terms of high school readers. I imagine there will be some shifts with middle school readers as their reading lives are at different stages. 

When I taught high school sometimes the Best Laid Plans still need to be adapted when it comes to Conferences and Time. Making conferring a routine roots us in reading practice that cultivates and shares joy.  I'll be sure to share how these routines work or go awry in my middle school classroom too.  We eventually shift from talking about their reading, to using their journal writing to discuss reading and writing. It is all Reading and Practice.

Setting up reading and writing routines takes time. We've got to plant the seeds. Let them germinate. The sprouts, sometimes takes weeks.  There is a science to reading and we need to use that data to check readers' skills and growth along the way. 

Eventually after many months of consistent care, readers will harvest joy. They will bring the book love to each other and we will come together in community to share in the bounty of story. 

8 Lessons for People from the Pack

This year, I am on the opening team for a new public middle school here in Orange County.  During our pre-planning days we are doing a lot of talking about establish culture and community. We can take away many lessons from wolves for our community. We are the wolves and #onepack is part of our story this year. 

To bring our new wolves into the pack, many of us will build community with ice breakers, team builders and other team challenges.  With 50 minute class periods, a quicker 5-8 minute activity makes for the perfect “do now” or transition into class at the start of each period or a wrap up for the end of each class period. 

I love Playmeo for activities and ideas. Stacey Jensen, an extraordinary teacher and advisory coordinator, introduced me to the site years ago. I can quickly find an ice break, an energizer, or a trust builder and I love that I can create lists of activities to use for units I'm planning. Our first week, with pack plans in pink,  is looking like this so far: 

I observe the pack while we engage in these community builders. Yetta Goodman used to call it “kid watching." Observing learners informs instruction. I question a lot of what I see: 

• Who's leading? Who's encouraging? Who's shy or hanging back?
• How can I use this data with students? How might I use photos to support students' reflections?
• How are students' talents, interests or needs showing up?

The start of a new school year is magical. To bring that magic,  I am reminding myself to avoid activities that could resurface trauma.  Instead of writing or talking about our names' origins, turn initials into mantras for the traits we most want to showcase this year. Instead of doing Blueprints of a Lifetime sketching our homes and basing stories on homes' floor plans, now I'll give students choices for sketching and storytelling: a favorite place, a room, a learning space, a community space, a park or an outdoor space. Even a thing can be sketched and storied.

I remind myself, if and when things seem to settle into silence in the first weeks: get kids moving. Get kids talking to each other. Get kids laughing. Get them reading and writing.  As we play and work together—connections build.  Our pack will be richer for it.

Thanks to the team at Two Writing Teachers!
Jump over to serve yourself another slice today.

Value Readers

Recently during a lunch break, teachers were talking about ways to encourage students to read more. They shared ideas, like encouraging choice and using scheduled time for reading. They were passionate about the importance of DEAR (Drop Everything and Read) time being built in to the daily schedule. A couple of teachers said that time is the biggest constraint. They said that with reading time built into the school schedule, everyone could read more. Everyone would be expected to read they said. We could do book talks and we could.... and we could... all of the things. Were all of the things actually reading? Reading adjacent, sure.

I enjoyed listening and remembering similar conversation from my years in schools. I kept quiet though. 

I thought about Linda Rief and time I spent in her classroom and I thought about teachers whose practice I've studied and learned with (Penny Kittle, Kelly Gallagher, Jen Roberts,  Jennifer Serravallo, Nancie Atwell). Listening to that group of teachers brought Atwell's wisdom to mind: 

“When we invite readers’ minds to meet books in our classrooms, we invite the messiness of human response—personal prejudices, personal tastes, personal habits, personal experience. But we also invite personal meaning, and the distinct possibility that our kids will grow up to become a different kind of good reader, an adult for whom reading is a logical, satisfying, life-long habit, someone who just plan loves books and reading.”

–Nancy Atwell, In the Middle

Reading is personal. As such, it becomes a personal passion, a personal responsibility. It cannot be "logged" or journaled dry. Reading varies. In a classroom full of students, it's messy and wonderful all at once.

I believe students have the right to reading time everyday in my classroom. I am the one responsible for protecting that time and providing it to the readers in the room. I am that decisive element, not the school's schedule. We make time for what we value. While many schools live their values in their daily schedules; many cannot. As a classroom teacher, why wait on the school's schedule? Encourage readers now. Make reading the default when students finish other work early or are looking for something different to do. Give readers the right to read whenever, however, and whatever they want.

I believe in readers' rights, as Daniel Pennac defined them early in my teaching and learning life. I believe in the power and magic of the right book at the right time as the late Goddess of YA,  Dr. Teri Lesesne said in Making the Match. I believe as Stephen Krashen does in The Power of Reading--that is free and voluntary.

I believe in following the Yellow Brick Roads of story and information to bring late Dr. Allen into the conversation. At all costs I believe, as Kelly Gallagher asserts, we must avoid Readicide in high school English departments and turn our faces to the light and love on the page as does Penny Kittle in Book Love. I still believe in Bandura's observational learning assertions and the fabric of Vygotsky's social-constructivism that brings a community of readers together around what is valued.

I used to think that we needed to track that reading, log it, record it, count it up. I learned that accounting actually de-motivates readers. Joy is in the doing and sharing, not in the surveillance.

When students see that teachers value independent reading, they begin to value it too. I know because students have told me so.

Valuing  reading in the classroom means making time for it, doing it, talking about it, monitoring it, assessing it, celebrating it and sharing it. We are the gardeners of our reading communities. We sow the seeds through passion and example. We tend the readers and celebrate when they bloom.