Related Posts
Bowl Leader
What is your best classroom management trick?
an Elementary School Special Education Teacher
Anonymous User
More Posts
Community Builder
Enthusiast
Thought I was on LinkedIn when I saw this one
Community Builder
Additional Posts in English & Language Arts Teachers
a High School English Teacher
New to Fishbowl?
Download the Fishbowl app to
unlock all discussions on Fishbowl.
unlock all discussions on Fishbowl.
I had to accept that I can only control but so much. I try to foster the joys of reading as much as I can in the classroom. The ones who love to read will read outside of school. The ones who don’t, won’t. Stressing myself with reading logs or other forms of accountability outside of the classroom is just going to stress me out because I can’t be sure that they’re taking it seriously. I let the parents know that they should foster reading in the home more, and either they do it or they don’t.
I had a student this past year who always carried a couple of books with her.
Book clubs work if you have multiple copies of certain books.
Invest in some graphic novels.
SSR for 10-15 minutes every day. Let them pick any book they want. When their interest is piqued, they will read on. Make the environment inviting and peaceful.
Honestly it just changes so at least some of the boxes are relevant to the unit.
So if we were talking about cultural criticism one of the boxes might offer this question: "Do you think your protagonist comes from a dominant or marginalized group? Why"
If it is feminist criticism it might be: "Do the female characters in your book act in stereotypical ways? Why do you think the author made that choice?"
Then there might be a question like:
"Provide one example of dialogue from the text that revealed something about the protagonist's character and explain what you learned."
Or
"Which character do you relate to the most? Why?
I have tried SSR at the high school level, and I hear, “I’m doing my _______ and so I’m reading, and I don’t want to fail.” Or they sleep. It’s a battle. I allow them to read any book, I have dozens and dozens of high-interest books plus newspapers and magazines, etc. If there’s a magic word to get them to do SSR, please let me in on it!
You can create a reading club where students read some chapters and then you assign a time to discuss their findings, or questions, or highlights. You can choose a novel that has mystery or history to intrigued students
Mentor
Our district used state funds to buy us classroom libraries that have something for everyone. We are committed to SSR time and allow checkouts of these books, hoping they will read outside of school. We plan to do more book talks and record them for other teachers to use and also have our kids record Flipgrid book recommendations and/or write short book reviews that we will post in class. Part of our curriculum involves setting reading goals and having conferences with them about what they’re reading. It is also important to give kids permission to abandon books that are just not for them. We are obviously fighting a battle and need to share ideas with other teachers as much as possible!
I use a audio book to play in class first. The book I pick is part of a series of books. I tell them that we don’t have enough time in class to cover the series because we have to cover other books but they can feel free to go to the library to check out the other books to the series to read at home. Believe it or not it works every time. But it has to be a very good series to keep them wanting more. I have had former students come back after graduating to thank me so much for introducing them to the series and that they have read the series and went on to read other books similar to that series. This is how I get my students hooked on reading. What’s funny is the new class I have this year is already excited about the novel readings because they have heard about it from either there older siblings or friends whom they know.
Which series have you read so far?
I assign reading from the class novel two days ahead (sometimes more).
On the day the reading is due, I start with a short quiz, usually 2 questions. They are questions that they should be able to answer if they did the reading "with your brain turned on," as I like to say. However, they will not be able to guess the answer if they didn't read.
I check to make sure the answers are not readily available in SparkNotes, etc. Unless the answer in SparkNotes, etc., is wrong (which happens about 10% of the time, surprisingly). In that case, I ask the question, and if they give the inaccurate on-line answer, they get a write-up for cheating.