Cultivate a Culture of Reading: Reflect and Share

• Reading is fun because you can see from another person's perspective.
• Reading is educational because I can connect to people around the world.
• Reading is fun because there are many questions, thoughts, and feelings as I read.
• Reading is good for learning and for your brain because you get to learn new vocabulary and also know that there are many kinds of people in the world. 
• Reading is fun because I get to go to another place.

I love reading 6th and 7th graders’ responses to the last prompt on their end-of-term independent reading reflection that asks them to fill in the blanks in the following sentence: Reading is _____ because _____. The above sentences were a sampling of the ones from last week.

It was an odd end of the academic year here in Japan as we flip-flopped between online and face-to-face learning for the first time since May of 2020. One of the casualties was the book presentation we usually do at the end of each term so each student can share with their classmates a good book they’ve read independently and we can all build our to-read list. I was worrying about how to get the students to present online, and suddenly I realized that if those truly were the objectives of the activity, then there was an easier way to do it. I simply put up a question in Google Classroom:

What book that you read this term would you recommend to your classmates? Give the author and title and where it can be found. Give at least 3 specific reasons why you liked it. Respond to at least 2 other classmates' recommendations--support the recommendation ("yeah, I read this; it was great"), ask a question, or express interest ("oh! this looks good!").

Though the assignment wasn't my first choice, the actual conversations around the books were fantastic. While two students didn’t do it at all, and a handful of students stopped at the required 2 responses, most really engaged with each other. The top contributors logged 13 and 15 responses! That’s definitely going into my toolbox for cultivating a classroom culture of reading.

  
Interestingly, while last term Ground Zero by Alan Gratz was the most read, this term no individual book got more than one vote. What were the books my 6th and 7th graders recommended? There was... 

• Nonfiction like Just Mercy (YA version) by Bryan Stevenson and I Am Malala by Malala Yousafzai.
• Historical fiction like The Last Cherry Blossom by Kathleen Burkinshaw and The War That Saved My Life by Kimberly Brubaker Bradley. 
• Contemporary realistic fiction like Towers Falling by Jewell Parker Rhodes.
• International fiction like The Bridge Home by Padma Venkatraman.
• Adventure like Genius: The Game by Leopold Gout.
• Humor like The 39-Story Treehouse by Terry Denton and Andy Griffiths.
• Fantasy (all from series!) like The Mysterious Benedict Society by Trenton Lee Stewart, Erak’s Ransom (Ranger’s Apprentice) by John Flanagan, Into the Wild (Warriors) by Erin Hunter, Brisingr (Inheritance Cycle) by Christopher Paolini, and The Tower of Nero (Trials of Apollo) by Rick Riordan.

Even at the end of this strange year, I am more deeply convinced that the investment of 10 minutes of class per day for independent reading is well worth it. Yes, reading grows vocabulary and and writing skill. But even more than that, my answer to the fill-in-the-blank question would be, reading is vital because, in a classroom culture that values reading...

1. We steward God’s gift of language by noting what is beautiful, powerful, and good. 
2. We honor God’s image bearers as we appreciate their acts of creation, communication, and meaning-making. 
3. We seek reconciliation as we see the world from another perspective, developing empathy for our brothers and sisters who are very different from us. 
4. We become motivated to seek justice as reading opens our eyes to the injustice that our neighbors suffer, reveals options and inspiration for justice, and gives us opportunities to practice choosing between right and wrong. 

Enjoy your spring break. And read something good!