Launching Independent Reading

The routines and habits we create in our classrooms show our students our values. We can tell kids all we want that we'd like them to read at home each night, but if we do not make time for reading in class, that message isn't conveyed, and more than likely, they also are not reading at home.

In 180 Days:Two Teachers and the Quest to Engage and Empower Adolescents, Gallagher and Kittle  state, "Every day we send a consistent message: Everyone reads in this class." (page 49)

Me: same.

Every day kids read their Just Right books. Every day I take status of the class and ask them what they're reading. When they abandon a book, I know. When they leave the book at home three days in a row, I know. When they finish a book, I know. When someone reads a great book, we tell the class about it. They add to To Be Read Lists after book talks and they log all the titles of the books they complete. In my class, kids read during our block, and they read the 20 pages every night assigned as homework, because every day, I ask them how it's going. I expect them to read VOLUMES of text, and they do!

We also have to confer with our students for lots of reasons:

• To help the kid who has never picked a book pick one.
• To find out why another keeps leaving their book at home.
• To figure out who is "fake reading" and who's actually really reading (comprehending).
• To see if they are applying the strategies from universal curriculum into their texts.
• To be the person to look a kid in the eye and be there, just with them, to listen to how a book changed their thinking.
• To share a joy and love and passion for a book or a character. (Edward Tulane, anyone?) :-)

Every day while students read, teachers confer. Kittle and Gallagher note that in a ten minute period, they aim to talk to 3-5 students. To begin the year, they focus on getting to know the students' reading habits. These are fact-finding conferences. Information is collected and recorded. These early conferences may go like this...

If a student indicates that he or she likes to read, Gallagher and Kittle follow up with:

• What do you like to read?
• What are your favorite genres?
• Who are your favorite authors?
• Do you have a favorite series?
• What are you currently reading?
• How do you find time to read?
• Where do you read?
• When do you read? (page 32)

If a student indicates they do not like to read, they follow up with:

• Why don't you like to read?
• Did you like reading when you were younger? If so, when did you stop liking reading? What caused this shift?
• When was the last time you selected a book on your own to read?
• Have you ever read a book you liked?
• Can you name an author you like?
• What interests you? What do you do in your free time? (page 32)

It's going to be day 3 of school here in D100 tomorrow. It's getting close to the time when students will begin picking books. Time for Kidwatching (Goodman): who will easily pick a book and settle in? Who will avoid books at all costs? Who will pick one, then return it, then pick another? Who will sustain reading for 25+ minutes? Who can recommend a book?

And what will we find out when we sit down and give our time and hearts to each child, individually? Hopefully these prompts for conferring with kids will get you going!

best books of 2017-2017

This school year I have finished 22 books! Here's a list of all the books I have finished:

1. Dogman, Dav Pilkey
2. The Outsiders, SE Hinton
3. Ghost, Jason Reynolds
4. The Water Princess, Susan Verde
5. Life, Cynthia Rylant
6. Jabari Jumps, Gaia Cornwall
7. Solo, Kwame Alexander
8. Wishtree, Katherine Applegate
9. Turning 15 on the Road to Freedom, Lynda Blackmon Lowery
10. Refugee, Alan Gratz
11. Born a Crime: Stories from a South African Childhood, Trevor Noah
12. Inside Out and Back Again, Thanhha Lai
13. After, Anna Todd
14. After We Collided, Anna Todd
15. After We Fell, Anna Todd
16. After Ever Happy, Anna Todd
17. I Am Not Your Perfect Mexican Daughter
18. The Dream Keeper and Other Poems, Langston Hughes
19. One Last Word, Nikki Grimes
20. Love, Hate, and Other Filters, Samira Ahmed
21. Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe, Benjamin Alire Saenz
22. Little Fires Everywhere, Celeste Ng

Looking back at the list, I feel super proud that I was able to accomplish all of that. Our goal was 25, but 21 is still great. By reading this books, I was reminded that you can get lost in a book (the After Series by Anna Todd was that!), that sometimes you just need to read something super easy for fun (Dogman), and that sometimes books are written so beautifully, you want to pick out all the little lines and put them all around your home (Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe). Here are my top three books from this school year that you should read!

#3 The After Series, by Anna Todd

So these are romance books, and definitely edgier than even YA books. Love stories, drama with a couple of college kids, and the back and forth of the relationship between Tessa and Hardin. She's the good girl, he's the bad boy, and there's all kinds of secrets and drama at play. I'm pretty sure I read all four of these books in December - they were so good all I wanted to do was read in my free time. Books can definitely be even better than the movies or TV; and speaking of, this series is in production for a movie for next year!

#2 Love, Hate, and Other Filters

I loved this book because it told the story of someone so different from me. Maya Aziz is American-born, but she is Indian and Muslim. I was able to learn lots about that culture and religion, and the book is set in Chicago, so I loved to see what train she might be taking or the neighborhoods she was hanging out in. The main character is also REALLY into creating videos, so it was cool to see how she viewed her world through a camera lens. Finally, theres a big theme about not judging people based on their outward appearances. A bombing happens, and immediately, Maya's family is targeted because of their race and religion. That isn't cool, so it's good to live her experiences to see what that might feel like, and to be aware of our own biases we might hold.

#1 Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe

Best book, hands down. It's the story of Ari and Dante, both high school guys. Ari has never had a friend, and Dante is very social. They meet by accident, and then go on to have this awesome friendship. Eventually Dante comes out of the closet and shares with his family and friends that he is gay, so you have to see how that plays a part in the book. I don't want to give much more away, but read this to be mesmerized by the beautiful language and the tale of friendship. It also shows that boys don't always have to be these tough guys, and shows how we all deal with emotions and feelings differently.

So there you have it. What are you favorite books of this school year? How many have you finished?

all american boys

It's so powerful what literature can do - take you somewhere, have you live moments you haven't experienced. That was how I felt as I read Jason Reynolds and Brendan Kiely's young adult novel, All American Boys. Except we have experienced the themes in this book to some extent. This book takes a look at police brutality and the movements that protest it. This is a story about racism and current events in 2017. I'd say it's reading all 8th graders and up should be doing, and also adults in our country. (My book club is reading it this month!)

The story is told by two narrators, Quinn, the white kid, and Rashad, the black kid. You get to know each of these characters personally as the narrator alternates between chapters. Quinn is an older brother to Willy, and son to a single-mother. His father passed away years before. Rashad is brother to Spoony and son to a mother and father, a father who is a police officer in the community.

The problem begins when Rashad is thought to be stealing from a convenience store and is taken outside and assaulted by Officer Galuzzo. Turns out that Quinn is within viewing distance, and he sees the whole thing happen outside. Rashad goes to the hospital where he finds he has a broken rib and a broken nose, among other scratches and bruises. Over the course of the week when Rashad is in the hospital, the news breaks, kids (and a few teachers) at school are left in turmoil, and a protest is organized as a response.

I think these authors did a really great job of representing both sides of the story well. This book isn't one that puts the work of our law enforcement officers down, in fact, does quite the opposite, and with a twist about a two-thirds of the way through, you can see that these authors were purposeful in creating a story that values the tough work our officers do each day, and also shedding light on what it's like to be an African American teenager growing up in the States. 

There are so many great conversations in the text, things that Rashad's mother shares with him that, unless you are an African American family in the United States, you might not realize have to happen. There is also a lot of internal dialog on Quinn's behalf, and some arguments between him and his white friends that illuminate the complexity of this issue. The theme of racism is presented well, and the reader is left understanding that yes, it does in fact still exist today.

This book is a Corretta Scott King Award Honor book and has received a new honor - The Walter - from Walter Dean Myers. I highly recommend it.

Deep into themes related to our current events and how they unfold for our young adults, next for me is American Street by Ibi Zoboi. I'll be back with another review when I get finished with that one.

Have you read All American Boys or anything else by Jason Reynolds? Please share!

library organization

Over the years, I've had many different ideas for organizing my classroom library. For the better part of my first 5 years, I didn't really pay any attention to it, an so similarly, neither did the students. Then, in grad school I got that the library is the heartbeat of your classroom, and that the more effort and energy you put into it, the more the students would use it. The library really is a great reflection of a teacher's beliefs about student-selected independent reading!

In the past, I had lots of baskets of books, by genre, by author, by topic, and so on. The baskets were numbered so it made reorganizing it easy for students to help with. Here's a pic from my library back in 2009, not exactly up close, but you get the idea:

Since coming back to the middle school, I have been able to rethink the library again. I decided I didn't want to use the numbering system because I wanted kids to be thinking about genres more. So, I got some color coding labels and here is what I came up with:

Pink labels represent fiction.
Green labels represent nonfiction.
Yellow labels represent poetry.

Then, within each color, I also label a more specific genre:

Fantasy, with an F on the pink label --

Realistic Fiction, with an RF on the pink label --

Informational Nonfiction, with an I on the green label --

I also have biography, which is not pictured here.

Poetry, just a P for poetry on the yellow label --

And this year, one of my new additions in fiction, Young Adult, with a YA on the pink label --

I started to get some of my old books out of the basement (they were stored at home while I was at the elementary school) and I'm finding that I still might need some baskets. I have a bunch of the Percy Jackson books, Harry Potter, and Cirque du Freak that should probably stay together, but I'm glad I've got this color coding and genre listed on the spine of the books.

I'm just reminded that it takes time for students to get into the books. I was so excited to have all these new YA books for kids, but then no one was reading them. Beautiful, brand new books, mostly hardcover! Some of my seventh and eighth graders are still going back to the Wimpy Kid and Big Nate books, which are fine, but with the elementary perspective I now have, I know that kiddos in third and fourth grade read those, and so what I want for my kids is to be reading books that are more age appropriate.

So, we will continue with our book talks, and I will keep pushing kids to try new books. It's one thing to hear a book talk from your teacher. It's another when a friend recommends a book.

How is your library looking this year? Any new insights into organizational tips? I'd love to hear about them in the comments!

Happy Friday!

summer shelfie list

Today's the day!
Today's the *official* three year anniversary.
HBD BigTime Literacy!

Hola amigos, time for another post in the #btbc16! Today we're sharing our summer reading lists!

Here's mine:

Already finished Me Before You - it was good. I've read about half of that Success for Teens book (it's the teen version of The Slight Edge: Turning Simple Disciples into Massive Success and Happiness), but I haven't been able to find it since I came home from Nashville.

Last night I Started Use Your Words & Selected Poems (two of the three books for this challenge). Use Your Words is great, but the poetry is a little difficult for me. I think that is the first poetry anthology I've bought!

You are a Badass is an Arbonne recommendation, and then at a yoga class a few weeks ago, the teacher was reading to us from it. It's subtitle is "How to stop doubting your greatness and starting living an awesome life." I'm so excited for that one!

You is a thriller my friend Holly recommended, and two of my friends from school are reading/going to read that one, so extra little book club there.

Every Single Second was a book I picked up from my Instagram feed - I think it's geared for the intermediate grades. Echo too, keep seeing that one from friends!

My teaching PD books are Write Like This, A Mindset for Learning, and Bringing Words to Life.

So, I've got some work to do this summer, but it's so nice to just wake up and the only thing on my agenda is to read - maybe at the park? the beach? lakefront? I'll take it :-)

What are you reading this summer?

An InLinkz Link-up

defining moments

The moment I because a Social Constructivist is as clear as day.

There I was, standing at the front of my classroom. My kids sat in groups of four. They had their basal (gasp!) out in front of them and we were reading a story from the book as a whole group (the horror!) It was some kind of traditional literature story about how the stars became in the night or something like that.

I would read a little, and then as prompted by the questions along the side of the book, stop periodically to ask the questions to the kids. I would pose a question, they would think and then turn and talk, and then we would share out.

This particular day I was modeling how to draw inferences as we read. The book told me to stop at some line and then share the inference listed. But there was a problem (well, there were a few, namely 1. basal reader, 2. whole group instruction, and 3. kids didn't do any independent reading, but I digress.) At that moment, my problem was that the inference that the book publishers were telling me to make made absolutely no sense to me. Zero sense. Zilch.

This happened in my fifth year of teaching when I was in the midst of my graduate work at ASU. I was learning about best practices in teaching reading and all the pieces suddenly fit together so perfectly.

Pearson or McGraw Hill or whoever was the publisher of this book was trying to instruct for me. I had no accountability to this book and this story, because it was all laid out for me. I just opened it up and read what it told me to. And usually it made sense, but in this moment when it didn't, it finally clicked. If I want to give my kids the best instruction, *I* have to be the one to figure it out and make meaning that makes sense to me. I have to be the one to prepare it for my kids!

I can't say that from that moment on I began doing what I'm doing now in year 12, but I was acutely aware that I had to construct my lessons myself.

I still used the basal, but I prepared how I was going to teach from the stories. Before I taught them, I sat down with that book - just the story, nothing else - and I read it through. I considered what my during reading strategy should be and picked places to stop and model what that would look like. I figured out if we would do any analysis after our first draft reading and planned that. The teacher who teaches kids each day should plan everything out. Not Pearson. Not McGraw hill. The practitioner.

Today, I am proud to be a part of a district that operates under a constructivist philosophy. In year 12, this makes sense to me and I believe it's what is best for kids.

But then I think of our first year teachers and how overwhelming it can be. I was lucky to be handed a basal in year one, and continue using it for five years. I got my feet wet, got my management down, had the kids do worksheets and everything was there for me. It was laid out and easy. That was all well and good, but it wasn't what is best for kids.

So to the newbies out there - the ones who are trying to get everything down in year one - the ones who are exhausted and have no time to do anything but work because on top of managing a classroom, you're also trying to learn how to teach a Reading and Writing Workshop - please know that you are giving kids amazing instruction, coming from what I believe is the hardest teaching philosophy out there. You're putting in all the labor to figure out how to model what good readers do and then give differentiated instruction in your guided reading groups, get kids to love to read and write, and then having them share. You're keeping anecdotal notes and using running records to inform your instruction, and writing Common Formative Assessments with your team, and grading them and then figuring out what kind of reteaching and enrichment needs to happen - you're doing all that work plus teaching three other content areas. I, on the other hand, opened a basal.

It's time for you to pat yourself on the back and appreciate all the work you've done, because it's outstanding and you're amazing.

Defining moments...mine was a sunny day in Phoenix during my fifth year of teaching. What is yours?

book obsession

ICYMI, we made a collaborative blog for the community at my elementary school. So far we have a few posts from a few different teachers, including one that was a Wordle of all the places you could read over the summer. One of our fifth grade classes came up with that, and it was a cool idea! I tagged it as "reading habits" and then I got to thinking about reading habits and reading rituals and that got me thinking about all of my bookshelves!

I love my bookshelves, especially when they are super organized. (I just fixed up my home book shelf before I did it's photo shoot!) Here it is:

This is from IKEA and it's survived move after move. I don't think it's going to make one more though, but I love it so much I'd buy it again.

Anyways, across the top I Have some of my favorite books - I was obsessed with Nicholas Sparks and used to read everything he would release. By the 10th book, it was the same story over and over again - set in the charm of the South by water with a love story that has some kind of terrible problem. But, loved them when I was into them! 

Then of course you see the Twilight books. Don't judge! Twilight was the first book I reread - I went through that series when I was doing my reading specialist certificate. Loved them...and I will always have a special place in my heart for those books!

Across the middle row I have lots of books about teaching and professional topics. I brought a few home from work that I need to revisit this summer. Then I have another favorite author, Jodi Picoult:

She's in the middle of that one - I had more of her stuff but took them to school when my eighth graders were nearing the end of our time together....The way she unexpectedly twists her stories will leave you like....whoa! Highly recommend her stuff- some of it is darker than others, but great stories.

Some of the other books in that stack I tried but didn't finish - like Anna Karenina and Wuthering Heights - I think I need to try again. The Promise of Stardust - don't remember the plot of that one but I remember it was super good. So how is that for a recommendation? :-)

Finally, most of my collection of my critical literacy books:

When I taught eighth grade, we always had our year-long theme be "You can change the world," which came from ideas from these titles. I'm hoping this summer to work on my units for the Social Justice Projects and publish them to TpT!

Well that's what is at home, along with assorted books laying all over the house:

At work, I have two more shelves - This one (also from IKEA) houses all my professional reads:

and this one holds all the picture books that Christine and I have:

This is some $20 book case that is on it's last leg, but it holds fiction on the top and NF on the bottom. When I was in grad school that's when the major book purchasing began happening. Here are a few of my favorites to teach with:

This one is about a rat who has a lisp and gets bullied. Then one day, his lisp comes to his aid as he (unintentionally) makes his school community better. This book is adorable and great for building community in your classroom!

Chato's Kitchen is a book about a low-riding gangster cat. I love this book because I totally do voices for the cat and the mice. Pretty sure there are some other books that feature Chato, too. 

I love Chewy Louie - it's a great text for an easily identified plot line. The dog chews up everything and the family goes through all these steps to help the dog stop chewing, including a singing therapist lady. Great book!

I've used Freedom Summer as part of my middle school Social Justice unit. Anyways this story is set in Mississippi in 1964 and is about two boys - one of which cannot do the same things as the other because of his race. It's a great way to open conversations about racism - in the past and current day!

So there you have it, all of my book cases! Do you feel any particular affection for yours? I'm sure you do, if you love books as much as I do!

Quick announcement: This summer on July 1st, I will be doing a PD for our district so teachers can get their own blogs going. I am going to hold a BigTime Blogging Challenge, too, with prompts for each of the days in July! I'm going to add this topic to the list, so get your ideas ready for July so you can link up with me! Of course, the purpose of blogging is to come up with your own ideas, so at any point throughout the challenge, you can always write about a different topic rather than the prompt, but just know I'll have a link-up every day of July. I hope you can join!

Have a great weekend! Only three days left of school for me (plus two of curriculum the week after!)

if I were still in the classroom: reading relationships

In a few weeks, the Literacy Coaches and teachers from around our district are going to be doing some summer curriculum work. In an effort to prepare for that, I've been busy reading Lucy Calkin's Curricular Plan for fifth grade. Today I came across reading partnerships and I so wish I knew about this when I had my own classroom!

If I still had my own classroom, I would totally build reading partnerships into my reading workshop. Reading partnerships are pairs of students who stick together (I'm envisioning a pair who would stick for a quarter of the school year at least) and talk about their Just Right books. You can build these pairs in various ways: by ability, interest, friendship, or mentor partnerships.

Ability Paired

The first way to create a pair would be by ability. If you choose to put kids together who are like ability, they are more apt to read the same kinds of books, and that would make discussions easy for them to have.

Interest Paired

Another way would be to create pairs by interest. If you know you have a few kids interested in the Percy Jackson series, for example, you'd put them together.

Friendship Paired

Or, you could pair students up by friendships - essentially let them choose one of their friends to pair up with. As you can guess, this might be kind of messy because you might worry that they would focus more on talking about their plans for the weekend than about the books they are reading, but when our kids move on to high school, they will rely on their friends to support them academically as they call one another for support at night. So, if you choose to go this route, you will want to teach them self-discipline and model exactly what the behaviors of an engaged pair would look like, sound like, and feel like. (Actually, you should do this for all the kids - regardless of how you pair them up...it's just good teaching!)

Mentor Paired

Finally, you might have your partnerships built as mentor partnerships - where one student will mentor another along their road to independent reading. Lucy Calkins reminds us that books bring peole together, and in this case, that is so. You may even find that children who otherwise wouldn't have ever talked to one another become friends with one another - all because of books!

So, what I'm envisioning for my hypothetical upper elementary or middle school classroom would be kids matched up in one way or another and then as a Do Now or as a share time at the end of the class period, they would get to talk to their partner about their Just Right book. 

Lucy Calkins says, "Pretty much every single day a reader needs protected time for reading and protected time to talk to someone about what he or she has been reading, as well as what work he or she has been doing as a reader. That is, these partnership conversations are sometimes full of talk about what is happening in their books - all readers love to talk about the characters, places, and plots of their books, especially as the books get increasingly complex. You'd never deny readers this pleasure because it is intrinsic to reading. At the same time, you want your readers to be able to answer the question, What work are you doing as a reader? What are you investigating? And you want that answer to show that they are responding to your instruction, moving across what Normal Webb calls Depth of Knowledge levels, so that they move from recall to synthesis to analysis" (A curricular Plan for the Reading Workshop, Grade 5, 2011-2012, page 20).

See that part in red up there? This is so true! One of the girls in my RtI group has been carrying around her new Chicken Soup for the Preteen Soul book and every chance she gets with me she's reading an excerpt or telling me about another story in the book. This is a natural phenomenon with reading and if we create reading partners, it will help our kiddos engage more with the books they read. Additionally, we will have them add the content we teach in class to their conversations, moving them from just the general plot line, to application of our mini-lesson content within their conversations!

Your Turn:
Do you have reading partners in your classroom that talk about their books daily? What do you think of the idea? Is this something you'd be open to trying? Please share your experiences!

Happy Monday Tuesday!

love letters...better than money!

Today I ran to the office to make a quick copy, and when I got there, Maria, our secretary, said, "Ms. Brezek, I have something for you!"

I replied, "Oh, is it money?" thinking that there was some outstanding reimbursement that the board still hadn't approved. (I actually think they do still owe me some money, but I clearly need to keep better records.)

"No, no," she said as she took some papers from a manilla envelope and handed me two essays by former students, and I thought, "Oh yes, it is that time of the year!"

See, after my eighth graders move on to the high school, they always have to write an essay at the end of their freshmen year about a teacher that impacted their education. Two years ago, I got a few, and this year, I got two more. I love this day - because these essays are much like the letters I used to write with students!

today's letters: a great blog to follow!

Before we blogged about our books, we wrote dialog letters. Students would be responsible for writing one letter a week to me - but all about reading and their books. Then, I would write a letter back to them about their books. Round and round we'd go over the course of the school year, having our own 1:1 conversations about books.

When I came to Heritage, these changed to blogs, but I still kept aspects of the letter writing. When seventh grade began, the first homework assignment was to write me a letter in response to a letter I wrote to students introducing myself. They would write back (on stationary that I provided them) and tell me about themselves. These would be filed into their writing portfolios as an On-Demand writing sample to look at at the end of the year for growth.

At the end of seventh grade, I wrote them another letter (one same letter that was copied for all students) and their last homework assignment was to write me back. I love these "love letters," as Nancy, a fabulous teacher who I got to work with called them. I would bind them into a book and save them:

Here's a letter I wrote to them at the end of seventh grade:

In eighth grade, we continued talking about books, writing blogs about books, and developing our thinking about experiences with them. At the end of eighth grade, I again, wrote each child a letter. This time though, every student got a hand-written, personal letter. They *loved* this, and even though it took ages, I loved doing it too, because then I got back the best love letters of all!

Here's one of my faves from the end of eighth grade last year:

So back to my main point about the freshman essays. This year, Lillian and Kirstin were the two girls who wrote about me. Here's Lilli:

Did you love how she said that I have a degree in Lit Studies? :-)

And Kirstin said...

Anyways, just wanted to share the highlight of my day with you all, and let these two special girls know just how important they are to me. Lillian, you remind me how important it is to *really* get to know someone before I pass judgment and that great relationships take time. And Kirstin, you are always so happy and so positive - I am not sure there is much that gets you down and I love that about you! Also, you remind me that it is great to try new things that might be outside my comfort zone! Thank you both for trusting me for the two short years we spent together, and I hope we are always just a phone call or a text away!

So...any of you do the letter writing, too? It's that time of the year, my first without my own class and I'm feeling kinda sad!

Please leave a comment with your version of the love letters, especially if you are someone who is out of the classroom now, like me!

Happy Wednesday!

But did they *really* read that book? (How to know when you don't have something like Accelerated Reader to tell you)

I've gotten a lot of questions from teachers wanting to make the move away from Accelerated Reader to an independent reading program where students read and respond to text in more authentic ways. (To read about my issues with AR, click here.) I've convinced you to make the move, but now you're wondering how you're really going to know if kids are reading. You will, I promise. Here's how and some non-negotiables for making it happen...

Dedicate time to independent reading in class
If you want kids to read independently for homework, you have to dedicate time in class to let them read. You giving up your class time sends a message that you value independent reading and as such, you will dedicate time in class to it.

How much time? In the beginning of the year when you're teaching students the routines of independent reading, you will give them time every day for (at least) the first month. Your first month of school you will be teaching them how to "live the readerly life." You will have mini-lessons about what good readers do, how to select books that are Just Right, and how to use the classroom library. You can find mini-lessons on this in Lucy Calkin's curriculum (her first unit is a month of lessons on this topic) or in this book by Fountas and Pinnell:

I know it says it's for grades 3-6, but I have used the mini-lessons for seventh and eighth grade, too. You can find them in chapter 9, page 142.

In the beginning of the school year, kids will read in class and at home. Homework every night in my middle school reading class? Read 20 pages and do strategy work or response prompts in your Reader's Notebook. Always. Every day of your middle school life. This is always the homework and rarely did I assign anything else.

After kids get the habits of independent reading, you change your class time to one day a week of independent reading at school. Keep it the same - the day doesn't matter, but the consistency does. Kids will come to expect the time to read in class. They will know that on Friday, there will be class time to get a new book or talk to a peer or teacher about reading. They will plan for it, just like you will.

More to come: Middle school schedule with direct teaching and independent reading.

Status of the Class
Kids who are not reading can't talk about their books with their teachers. This is why Status of the Class (read about what that is here - it's a non-negotiable for Reading Workshop) is so very important! During Status of the Class I call out to each student to ask what page they are on. I take status every. day. of. my. school. life. The kids know this. They know I'm going to ask them what page they're on.

The first thing you'll notice when doing Status is that some kids will abandon a lot of books. They'll tell you, "I lost that book. I don't know what to read next," or "I didn't like it, it was boring." As I hear Status reports from kids like this, I might be wondering, "Was the book a future book? Was the book boring? What interests does the child have? I need to match them with a great book!"

Comments like these are bound to happen and when they do, I naturally begin to pay closer attention to that child each day that I call them for Status. I continue tracking their Status on the calendar and may also note some other observations. Additionally, I will want to talk to that child 1:1 as soon as possible to help them get matched with a better book.

Please know: There will be LOTS of kids who will *really* be reading along in their books (and some reporting that they are, when in all actuality, they are not)! You won't be red-flagging all kids.

That being said, the teacher will, sooner or later, become suspicious about some kids - wondering if they really are reading all those pages...and so you'll ask them, "How's that book going?"  You can tell right away if the child is reading the book or not (and if they are real-reading or fake-reading!) A child who is genuinely reading the book will have answers to all your questions. They won't just say, "It's cool." (RED FLAG!) They'll be able to elaborate about it. And if they can't, you'll know that it's a fake reading-situation. At that point, you'd sit down with the child for a conference about the book. (More to come on that later.)

So, conversations that stem from Status of the Class will help you know whether or not students are reading. Please know, it takes time to see patterns. You're going to have to trust me on this though - If you do Status of the Class every day without fail, you will see patterns. You will know who is reading and who is not!


Response to Books
Daily homework in my class was strategies and responses written in a Reader's Notebook. So, when I taught kids that good readers predict, then they read their Just Right book for homework and wrote down predictions from their book. The next week, when we moved on to questioning, the kids then wrote questions about their JR book in their notebook.

When students finished their books, they then had to write about them. We did this with class blogs at edublogs. (If I did this again, I'd use Blogger!) Anyways, the routine in my class was: read a book, write a blog, check out a new book. I knew who was where in the process because of Status of the Class.

Teachers have emailed me to ask, "Michelle, how do you know they're really reading and writing their own response and not just looking up a review online to write their blog?"

In most cases, you will know. I've had countless kids copy and paste reviews from Amazon or any other site the reviews books. How did I know? Because middle school kids don't write super complex sentences with vocabulary they don't understand, punctuated and spelled perfectly! When kids are really writing blogs every week, you'll know what kind of writer they are and so when they submit a blog and you read it and wonder if someone else wrote it, you're right! So then it's a conversation about plagiarism.

Here's the thing: Reading Workshop is messy. When you teach with this kind of philosophy, you are telling kids, "I trust you. I will guide you, but I also trust you to make good decisions." It's a process and you will learn as you go, but it's so much better than relying on a computer program that asks low-level, multiple-choice questions to know whether or not kids are reading! Kids should be reading because real-life people in the real world read for fun and to learn things, not because of some silly questions and some points and prizes from a reading program.

Does this give a little more insight to how teachers would manage independent reading without AR? What questions do you still have? You know how sometimes, when you know a topic really well, you think you're explaining it well, but in all actuality, you're not? That's how I feel sometimes...this moment included!

I hope this illuminates how we can create independent readers without the carrot-and-stick method that is Accelerated Reader!

Have a great weekend!

It's your own *special* book!

My new favorite thing ever? Personal Readers. Yes, LOVE them:

Since we want our kiddos to be reading, reading, reading, you might be wondering how you make that happen for kinder kids. They need decodeable texts or books that they have read repeatedly with their teacher. So how do we find enough copies of short, decodable books for our youngest readers?

Now, maybe this is nothing new, but I am only in my first year of learning about reading in the primary grades. In middle school, I could get Just Right books into my kids hands no problem. Kinder presents a little extra challenge - how do you find stories that are just right for the levels that they are reading?

So what are they? They are basically just a folder or a binder with pages of stories the kids can read on their own. Here are a few samples of the pages that the homeroom teacher and I have added to the folder:

What a School Needs was a leveled reader with predictable text that I had done with a guided reading group. After we finished with it, I typed it up on two pages, scanned the pictures from the book, and inserted them into the doc. It took me about 30 minutes, but I saved the file in case anyone ever uses it again.

We Travel was another leveled reader with predictable text that the Melinda, the kiddos' homeroom teacher, did with some of her groups. I let the kinder teachers know that if they give me any text they find, I will convert it to a Personal Reader page.

Then, Melinda found these two decodeable texts for the kiddos on the web. The kids have finished all their initial consonant sounds and are now into their second week of short a word families, so these were perfect!

I can't even tell you how excited the kids get for these readers. They're just plain folders with three prongs in them, but each child gets their own stories and has their own folder of "Just Right" stories to read. We're moving more and more towards a Reading Workshop model with kinder, so they have to have independent reading. Well, here we go!

Here's one of our students reading from her Personal Reader:

Is it so so cute, or what? I need to get in there when she hands out new stories for the readers so I can show you how pumped the kids are. You're going to love it!

So, if you are a kinder or first grade teacher, and you use leveled reading books for your guided reading, go ahead and create these personal reader pages and buy your kids a folder. They will feel so proud as they read through all their stories!


And just wanted to share a picture of one of the great reading specialists at my school - I am learning so much from her and I'm so glad she's my new friend! Christine is totes amazeballs! :) This was us last Friday after our work party. So fun!

And teachers....I know it seems like a long week left so far, but only four more "get-ups," so:

You can do it!

Happy Monday!