Nurturing Readers: Reading Shift #2

How do you monitor readers' progress? Do you confer and take notes? Do readers keep logs? Do learners write about their reading in journals or keep records of books read as a class? How I monitor and nurture readers' progress in my high school classroom has certainly changed over the years. 

There are practices I am not proud of when it comes to how I support the readers in the room. Yes, I too have at one time asked kids to keep track of the amount of time they've read. And yes, I asked kids to have their parents sign reading logs at one point. And also, I've asked kids to note the pages they are on day to day or week to week. 

I'm not alone in these practices. A bevy of teacher writers and consultants have written about them: from Nancy Atwell's status of the class in her seminal In the Middle to Penny Kittle's spreadsheet in Book Love. I am on a long walk with these professional mentors in my own practice.

How I walk, my gait, my pace, my purpose especially shifts as I learn. How I monitor and nurture readers' progress has shifted 

I used to use a shared Google sheet and handwritten anecdotal notes to monitor what learners were reading and the progress they were making. For a time, I even experimented with this reading tracker idea, but that seemed too much like policing readers during the time it takes them to get settled, so I abandoned that.  I've blogged about independent reading and my growing practice many times: from "Reading Record Revised" in 2013 to "Reading not Accounting" and rethinking "Reading Logs" in 2018. 

This year I wanted to see what would happen if I abandoned the shared Google Sheet. I've shifted to relying on my anecdotal notes from conferring. I use Good Notes 5 on an iPad and take notes as I confer and notice readers habits in the room.

There are pros and cons to this shift, as with anything. One pro, much like Evernote which I used in the past, I can include all sorts of media in the GoodNotes app and I can share with a collaborator. So, if I had shared responsibility for a group of learners, the teaching team could be in on the same notebook. Imagine the power of keeping anecdotal notes together?! I have a feeling elementary and middle school educators already know this power. In the high schools where I've worked, anecdotal notes and sharing professional observations (assessments) and evidence of learning via those notes is rare. One con? I feel like I don't have an at-a-glance view of the books readers have finished this year. I miss that. I've used a Google form to collect titles mid-year, but it's not quite the same as my last iteration of the Reading Record.

I will keep thinking, keep reflecting and keep iterating. After all, that's what makes this work so exciting. As Linda Rief once said to me that's the thrill of teaching. Finding solutions, figuring out just what will work best for the kids right in front of you-- exciting, challenging and purpose-driven.

Thanks to the team  from Two Writing Teachers 

for hosting the Slice of Life Story Challenge every day in March.