“What would you rate this book on a scale of 1 to 10?” one 6th grader asked another, standing in front of our classroom library last Friday after class. She was holding Maybe He Just Likes You by Barbara Dee. Another 6th grader drifted over to listen in on the impromptu book talk. After discussing several books, the first student walked away with Counting by Sevens by Holly Goldberg Sloan. Sharing book recommendations naturally is what readers do. That’s why it delights me to overhear my students doing it. They are taking on the identity of readers.
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| Judging by cover wear, these are 6 of the top recommendations from my 6th and 7th graders |
- Time: For most of the past 2 years, we have been starting every 45-minute class period with 10 minutes of independent reading.
- Choice: I make sure a range of interesting books are available for students, and that I am familiar enough with both the books and the students to make recommendations based on interests and reading level.
- Modeling: I model my own reading life as a curious, enthusiastic, and eclectic reader.
- Conversations: I check in with where students are (book title and page number) once a week and conference with them once every 2 weeks. Students share their favorite book of the trimester with their classmates inn a presentation at the end of the term.
- Reflection: And students set goals and reflect on their reading.
This first trimester of our new academic year (mid-April to mid-July), I added 2 experiments based on a re-reading of Book Love by Penny Kittle: (1) setting goals by reading rate (tested in a 10-minute reading time) and (2) adding a reading ladder reflection. The reading ladder reflection I initiated mid-term to help the students think about challenge and the books they chose. Students make a list of the books they’ve read from easiest (on the bottom) to most difficult (on the top). Then they reflect on their choices. It isn’t necessarily that easy is bad and hard is good. We can relax with an easy book, challenge ourselves with a hard book, and look for what is a good level of challenge and interest for learning.
As it turned out, it was doubly good I did that mid-term reflection, because the last week of our term was a mad scramble with Covid cases sending us online. So in my own reflecting on students’ independent reading this term, I’ve used a combination of their mid-term start on a reading ladder, and their final reflection.
Students in my combination 6th/7th grade class read an average of 8 books each (range: 2 - 15, mean and mode: 7). Favorites included novels in verse (Crossover), adventure (Hatchet and the Alex Rider books), historical fiction (Ground Zero and Grenade by Alan Gratz), memoir (While I Was Away), and fantasy (A Wish in the Dark, Ranger’s Apprentice series, and Inheritance). Books like Sideways Stories from Wayside School, The Wild Robot, and Diary of a Wimpy Kid fill the bill for students still building English reading proficiency.
What did students learn? Here are some of their observations…
- I realized that I use the same word too many times when I write something, and that good authors don’t use the same word over and over.
- This term, I realized that I don’t dislike all fantasy books. Last year, I wouldn’t even try to read fantasy, but this year I decided I would try fantasy, and I really got into Ranger’s Apprentice. Since then, I realized that I shouldn’t judge a book by its cover.
- I can read Japanese books very fast, but I read slowly with English books. As for me, it is hard to image the scenes of each events or actions. I like books with pictures because it is easier to imagine them. Graphic novels—I like them and I can read faster than Alex Rider or The Faithful Spy, but I don’t think I can learn very much from graphic novels.
- The Tale of Despereaux was the easiest.... The hardest one was The Book Thief because it is hard to know who’s speaking. The most satisfying one is Inheritance because it’s so long and the last of the series.
Students had a variety of answers to strategies they use to help them understand:
- Summarizing or translate into Japanese
- Trying to guess what’s going to happen
- Looking up words I don’t know
When I asked them to set a summer reading goal for themselves and make a plan for accomplishing it, one student really got specific: 1 day = 15 min; 1 week = 1 hour 15 minutes. Read while my grandma is doing yoga.
And my favorite final question, when I ask students to fill in the blanks of the following sentence: Reading is _____ because _____. Here are some of the responses from this term:
- Reading is inspiring because it helps me think of new ideas and new points of view.
- Reading is good because you can learn more English.
- Reading is important because you can learn about the world, and can also widen your imagination.
How do you help your students build a reading identity?
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