I agree with the posters above -- and while I'm certainly no genius, I'll send my logs to anyone who is interested.
I have over 750 independent reading books in my classroom -- from "edgy" to classic. We read for two 45-minute periods per week -- if I can schedule it, I will make them back-to-back so it's one "block" of 90 minutes once a week. I have an impressive collection of yard sale pillows, bean bags, and carpet squares for the kids to curl up in as long as they are behaving. It can be easy for kids to try and hide their iPod earbuds during reading time if you don't know what to look for! I've tried reading journals, and they just don't work for me. It seems too contrived and I can't correct them fast enough for them to be effective. So I keep track of how many pages each student reads per session. Each student has an individual goal (I keep the data on an Excel spreadsheet so it's easy to track) and gets a grade per session. If you meet or exceed your goal, you get 100. If you don't, you get a percentage. The goals are adjusted by me and computed by my spreadsheet, so it's easy to grade. It has to be easy for it to work with me! When they abandon a book, they fill out a sheet that tells me why. When they finish a book, they can either fill out a sheet giving me info about the book OR do a booktalk for the class. This is the 6th year I've done it this way -- I tweak it a little every year, but it seems to work best for the kids this way. They read voraciously -- I expect them to finish 20 books per year and every one of them always does. We also read 4-5 additional novels as a class throughout the year, and use those novels for "response and curriculum" topics. Hope I haven't bored anyone! Like I said, I'm no genius -- just developed this through lots of trial & error. It works for me, but I'm not saying it's the perfect solution!! Another great book is "The Book Whisperer" I read it last summer and felt like I was reading about my own classroom! :) Ms. Liz McGivern 8th grade Language Arts Hudson Memorial School
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