I teach 3 Language Arts classes grades 7, 8, and 9 at an inner city school. When I first started last year the over all attitude was that reading 'sucked' and it was NOT cool to read! Over time I have found that there is been a shift in students thinking.
Personally one of the keys to students appreciating reading is that we have a huge selection of books available! So many of our students just don't have access to books. In a cluster group that I belong to centered around 'at risk/at promise readers' we have spent a great deal of our time discussing this. The importance of having a good selection of books available for girls AND BOYS is one of the key ideas that keeps coming up. I sign out 200 plus books(including fiction AND NON FICTION) at a time for my classroom from our school library every 6 weeks or so. I also spend about $500 per year buying books that the staff of book stores recommend. A suggestion from our group was to bring some students with you to purchase books. I plan to do that next time. I also really try to have a variety of reading material available. I subscribe through a discounted magazine subscription company to various magazines geared to teen boys and girls. I often use articles from these to illustrate a reading strategy. Our school also gets about 15 copies per day from our local paper that are available for teachers to use in their classrooms. Something that I tried with my last book purchase was to buy the first and second of a variety of popular series. WOW-did that ever hook them! They read the first, argued over who would get to read the second and then begged me to get the third! The other key point that our cluster group has discussed is the importance of daily read aloud. Even though I only have each class for 50 minutes per day I try to build in time for read aloud. It is rarely a novel that I'm reading. I find my students attendance too sporadic to try to read something that takes that long to read. I sometimes read excerpts from a novel-which usually ends up being signed out by someone. I also read short stories, picture books, magazine articles, newspaper stories. Sometimes these are springboards into writing lessons. Sometimes they simply become part of a circle discussion. I always try to model through think aloud at least one reading strategy. I believe this has had a great impact on students reading more! Reading assessment... can come in so many forms! I can usually tell by a quick conversation during the 20 minute reading time slotted in 3x per week who is reading what. I do try to get around and connect with each student once per week. If they have trouble telling me about what they are reading, seem to be reading a different chapter book each day,I know they are not reading. As far as assessing their comprehension or strategy use I do this during structured lessons, guided reading, literature circles, informal reading inventories twice per year, and literature discussion circles. I think that the purpose of book talks is to get kids reading more by sharing a variety of genres and titles with them. I like the idea of focusing on speaking skills. When my students do book talks I have them self assess their presentation and persuasion skills given set criteria. I can send you a copy of this if you are interested. Shelley -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Ann Sent: Wednesday, January 31, 2007 4:16 AM To: Mosaic: A Reading Comprehension Strategies Listserv Subject: [MOSAIC] appreciating reading Thank you to all those that have been responding to this thread. My book talks don't require any writing and are only given one time per month for 3-5 minutes.--which I also use to work on oral speaking skills. The reading logs are 1-2 complete sentences and I have yet to implement the reading response with writing 2 paragraphs--I don't believe that the writing is the issue folks. In real life I don't read and write a response, nor do I take a written test, but seventh grade students won't read if I don't have some accountability. How will I asses their reading? In 50 minute class periods, and 120 students a day, I don't have time to do any one-on-one assessing, nor do I have time to spend every day reading. Writing, viewing, listening and of course speaking is part of my curriculum too, which is all tested every year. Blogging is great.....but not every student has access to a computer. Being a 15 year veteran 6th grade teacher and then moving to 7th grade has proven to be very different! Fifth graders liked reading better than 6th graders. Sixth graders like reading better than seventh graders. Why? Boys, friends, after school activities, talking, etc...... T hank you to those who have responded, I appreciate the insight and am going to try to "tweak" my routine. Ann _______________________________________________ Mosaic mailing list [email protected] To unsubscribe or modify your membership please go to http://literacyworkshop.org/mailman/options/mosaic_literacyworkshop.org. Search the MOSAIC archives at http://snipurl.com/MosaicArchive. _______________________________________________ Mosaic mailing list [email protected] To unsubscribe or modify your membership please go to http://literacyworkshop.org/mailman/options/mosaic_literacyworkshop.org. Search the MOSAIC archives at http://snipurl.com/MosaicArchive.
