Sharing My Reading Life

I don't know about you, but I can't remember a time when reading wasn't an integral part of my life.  It isn't something I do on the side or an 'added extra'; it's actually part of who I am.  So it was almost impossibly difficult, for me, to fathom a life that didn't have 'to read' piles in most rooms, a passionate opinion about folded corners v bookmarks and friends who exist only in my imagination and on the pages in which we met.  Until I met my husband. 

He is, most definitely, not a reader. Don't get me wrong, he read. He enjoyed it actually, but it didn't bring him the same core deep satisfaction. I struggled with this for a long time: how could he just get into bed and go to sleep? What did he do whilst waiting for an appointment? Where did he escape? Here was a way of life that made no sense to me. I questioned him. I nagged him (oh yeah, there's that wife of the year nomination again). I interviewed him about possible reading traumas in his childhood.  I even engaged in some serious guerilla reading propaganda attacks to bring about change. 

It didn't work. I realised that my approach was completely wrong. My goal was to convince him that he should read, and that he should love it. Ha! How foolish!

And how reminiscent of so many of the ways we teach reading in schools. We tell our students that they must read and we expect them to engage with the process willingly, if not happily. We offer intervention for those who struggle to read, and fret over those who won't. It's a lot like my guerilla attacks.

You know what? None of that works either. Kids, just like my husband, don't end up loving reading because we make them read or because we tell them they should.

I eventually wore out and concluded that my husband was - and don't get me wrong, I love him dearly - deeply flawed and beyond my capacity to help. (Oops, did I just say that out loud?) I let go. I stopped nagging. I stopped questioning. I stopped reading (excuse the pun) into everything he ever said about his childhood. I stopped planting books. And went back to my own reading life. I started talking about my books. I shared funny little anecdotes that I knew would make him chuckle. I made connections between what I was reading and what was going on in the world. I allowed my reading to become part of our shared life. 

What happened next is hardly a surprise to anyone. He started reading more. Slowly at first, and still not with the same feverish obsession as I do but with his own quiet commitment. 

Here's my theory. It's, like, totally scientific and stuff. It's also GROUNDBREAKINGLY NEW!!! So much of what we do at school rams reading down the throats of our students as something they have to do and be good at. It's not about learning to love the possibilities of reading. And it should be. As Victor Hugo said: 'to learn to read is to light a fire'. Or as Frederick Douglass said: 'once you learn to read you will be forever free'. This is the very essence of what we need to teach students. Once we teach the value of reading, the rest becomes easy. (Please don't think I'm discounting dyslexia or other such issues. They're real. So. Real. And they need more research and student who live with them need more support. This treatise includes these kiddos, but I'm not suggesting that this answers those particular needs.) 

How do we do it? I think we should share our own love of reading. Talk about books. Share funny, sad or powerful parts of our own reading.  Make connections between our own reading, and events that are relevant to the students. Discuss books our students might not yet be able to read but may create a spark. Model our own reading life and the value it has for us.  It's not rocket surgery but I'd go as far as saying that it's more important though.

Let's give it a go. I made a commitment to share more of my reading life/love with my students at the beginning of this week and it's already had an impact. I'll give it a couple of weeks and report back. Who will join me?

 'I love books. I love that moment when  you open one and sink into it. You can escape from the world into a story that's way more interesting than yours will ever be.' 

~ Elizabeth Scott

This relates to the following Australian Professional Standards for Teachers:

Standard 1 Know the students and how they learn

Standard 2 Know the content and how to teach it

Standard 3 Plan for and implement effective teaching and learning

Standard 4 Create and maintain supportive and safe learning environments

Thinking about Book Clubs

One of the exciting parts of my school's literacy programme is the inclusion of book clubs.  Not just as extension for our high flyers but for everyone.  I'll admit that it's part of our programme that I'm not brilliant at implementing but I have big plans this term to improve that.

One of my existing book club groups has not loved their experience so far; I know that this is, in large part, my fault. I haven't given them as much guidance and input as I should have done. With this in mind I've created a couple of info graphic style posters and hand outs.

This first one is in response to some confusion about how a book club is meant to run.  If you click on the image you'll be able to download a copy. (I think? Please let me know if you can't!)

This second one is a quick little 'cheat sheet' to prompt the sorts of discussions that can happen in book club. Again, feel free to download it if you like.

What do you think? I'm keen for feedback.

Edit (August 17th 2015): You can read my follow up post here.

This relates to the following Australian Professional Standards for Teachers...
Standard 2 Know the content and how to teach it
Standard 3 Plan for and implement effective teaching and learning
Standard 4 Create and maintain supportive and safe learning environments

Chatting Over the Smorgasbord

I've been following Pernille Ripp on Twitter (@pernilleripp) for a while now and her blog is one of my must reads. Her Global Read Aloud community on Facebook is also pretty inspiring.  So, last night, when one of my colleagues tweeted me a link to one of Pernille's posts I enjoyed the prompt to revisit it.

The post in question talked about giving one minute 'book chats' (you can read it for yourself here). The premise behind a book chat is to spend a minute talking up a book you love with the intention of exciting someone else (in our case: students) to read it, love it and go on to spread the love.

I remember thinking, the first time I read the post, that I loved the idea and should definitely start. Yep. Well. I didn't. You know how it goes: beginning of the year madness. And then I read it again last night and realised that I don't need to start.

I already do it.

I share my passion for books with my class all day.  I regularly pull out individual books and 'sell' them. Non fiction texts about our current topic, picture books I love, novels I've enjoyed or think someone in the class will, poetry books with a hook, biographies of inspiring people... I talk about them all, and more.

Image from
The New York Times

The purpose for me, aside from enticing my kiddos to expand their reading diet, is to model being a broad reader. We all have our favourite genres, authors and topics but good readers feast from a smorgasbord of grand variety. A diet of plain fruit and vegetables may be healthy but it's also boring and uninspiring. We all need a balanced diet, in reading, just as in eating.  We may fill up on our favourites but it's important to throw in a spicy travel tale, or sweet picture book once in a while. My book talks demonstrate being a reader who balances my book choices between all the academic books I read, the picture books I pour over, and the novels I read for book club (or just fun), and... All the others.

If I carry this metaphor through... A book chat is like a taster, so over the course of the day, my class usually receives a tasting plate!

This relates to the following Australian Professional Standards for Teachers...
Standard 2 Know the content and how to teach it
Standard 3 Plan for and implement effective teaching and learning
Standard 7 Engage professionally with colleagues, parents/carers and the community

Book Club

I have precisely 28 minutes until my ride to book club will be here. I love my book club. Admittedly it's all about the books but that's OK right? My book club girls are awesome, and the bookshop where we meet is fantastic. (Seriously, if you live in Adelaide you really should check out this shop: Mockingbird Lounge on Broadway in Glenelg.) A night out in the middle of the week away from kids, partners, work and life isn't too hard to handle either!

I haven't started book clubs with my class yet this year, although I have plans to do so in the next couple of weeks. Last year I ran a couple. Every student in the school will ideally get the opportunity to have at least one book club experience each year. Ideally. Until we 'up skill' all of them that's not overly realistic.  I'm hoping to run more this year, but we're a little way from that yet.

My first group this year will probably comprise girls who were all successful (and enthusiastic) "book clubbers" last year. I discovered last year that an enthusiastic first group meant that the second group were excited before they even began. These girls are all skilled in articulating their metacognition around reading strategies and synthesis well.  Listening to their discussions was inspiring.

I wonder how I can create this experience sooner for my lower level students?  I wouldn't give up my book club for all the tea in China, and my "book clubbers" last year gained so much from their experiences... I feel like I'm cheating some of my kiddos.   Can I run a book club with a picture book? Or a range of picture books? Focussing on an author - almost as an author study?  What would that look like?  What about an early chapter book like Boy Vs Beast?

My ride's here... I'm off to book club. Have a great night!

This relates to the following Australian Professional Standards for Teachers...
Standard 1 Know students and how they learn
Standard 3 Plan for and implement effective teaching and learning

Ticking Words in My Sleep

I spent less than 5 minutes in my classroom today. For most of the day I was within ten metres of our main door but I didn't go in.  No fancy new 'hands off' teaching technique: just an assessment day. Today I ran Fountas & Pinnell Benchmark Assessments on my kiddos.  Most of them anyway.

Prior to today I had run precisely two F&M assessments on my own, and observed two others. Today I did seventeen - many of which included two or three levelled texts. To say that my head is spinning right now is an understatement.  I think I'll be ticking words and writing SC in my sleep...  As I dream of, tomorrow, assessing the four kiddos who weren't at school today. 

These are the last assessments I have to do to complete the battery our staff agreed to perform as our baseline data for the year. As with most schools, we benchmark our reading levels a couple of times a year. Our school will, over the course of this year, be moving from using PM Benchmarking to F&P. Our literacy committee and leadership team decided that F&P was a more appropriate assessment tool for our school as it assesses right through to a reading age beyond primary school age.  (Check out the correlation between colour banded levels and F&P here.)

I was pleasantly surprised by the comprehension section of F&P.  There are no question, just a range of prompts and some some suggested key understandings.  Beyond the broader age range, this is, in my opinion, the key advantage of F&P.  Through these 'comprehension' discussions I was able to hear the reading strategies my kiddos are using - or not. One student told me that he'd made a text-to-self connection with one part of the story which helped him clarify an unfamiliar word. I nearly wept at hearing this: we've been focussing on clarifying in our reading block for the last week and a half. Another student told me that she'd used her prior knowledge to infer the feelings of a character. Still another predicted that cacophony had something to do with sounds because she knows the morpheme phone.  

Then there were the kiddos who came across an unfamiliar word and just skipped it.  And the ones who couldn't explain how the author had achieved a particular effect.  And those who couldn't retell the story. As each kiddo left me, I placed their name into the boxes on the small strategy group sheet my deputy principal had suggested I used.  It's an A4 page with 20 squares. Each has a strategy or small group focus at the top. It sounds like such a simple idea but it works brilliantly! (I'd previously used something much less formalised so I felt like a bit of dill for not thinking of it myself. (I'd scribbled areas of growth as I discovered them and added names as I went.) I've come away today with a plan.  Hooray!

I don't love spending time away from my classroom, but today the benefits far outweighed any other problems that arose. (And arose they did...  The kiddos were mostly self-regulated but not in the same way they usually are.  They were pretty engaged but not like normal.) I did love being able to spend some one-on-one time with each kiddo talking about their reading; and I loved learning about them. I can't quite say I love having a range of data on which to base my planning but I do appreciate it.

I feel the need to link this to my recent post about assessment. My take home message from that post was that my kiddos don't mind assessment if they understand its purpose. Today I made sure to explain to each of my kiddos that this assessment was for ME to learn about their reading strategies so that I could better meet THEIR needs. A couple really took this to heart and pointed out things that they don't feel confident doing: "I need help with inferring, make sure you write that down".  Now that's what I call students taking advantage of an opportunity!

This relates to the following Australian Professional Standards for Teachers...
Standard 1 Know the students and how they learn
Standard 2 Know the content and how to teach it
Standard 3 Plan for and implement effective teaching and learning
Standard 5 Assess, provide feedback and report on student learning
Standard 6 Engage in professional learning