My students need more novels and more magazines to improve literacy and vocabulary. They read every week and have exhausted my current store of material, which I provide.
"We read to know that we are not alone."
-- William Nicholson, Shadowlands: A Play.
The power of reading is a joy that today's students are knowing less and less. My goal is to bring reading back in a world where people think reading is updating your Twitter feed.
About half of my students are eligible for the free and reduced lunch program.
As a result of their poverty, many of them have absolutely no reading materials in their homes and reading has not been encouraged. Many of my juniors and seniors have admitted that even in school, they have never finished reading an entire book on their own. Even when they try, they are distracted by the television, smart phones, computers, siblings, etc. Most of them don't know what it means to truly read. In addition to simply not experiencing the joy of reading, my students' vocabulary suffers tremendously. They struggle to express their ideas verbally and in written form because they don't have enough experience with the written word.
My Project
Two and a half years ago, I ran across an article in The English Journal called, "Why I No Longer Teach Vocabulary." It caught my attention because for almost a decade, I had struggled with how to teach or even if to teach vocabulary to my students. We all know that teaching vocabulary by rote memorization doesn't really work, but I didn't know how else to do it. To be truthful, I just didn't. The writer of this article agreed, did some research, and decided that the way students learn vocabulary best is by reading. The snag is that students must be able to have choice in what they read, and they must have time to read. So, I started something called Free-Reading Friday. Every Friday my students take part in sustained, silent reading. They get to choose what they read, and the only rules are that they have to read. They can't talk, sleep, or do homework.
Sometimes, they complete a reading journal; sometimes, they just earn points for reading to relaxing music. My students need more novels and more magazines to improve literacy and vocabulary.
I have had success with my Free-Reading Friday program, but I need more reading materials!
They will learn vocabulary, but perhaps even more importantly, they will learn that in whatever situation they find themselves in, they are never alone as long as they can escape with a good book ... even if it's only for 50 minutes on a Friday.
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