The best moments happen when I hear an enthusiastic yell "Have you read this yet? You've gotta read this book!" As the year progresses, though, our class gets busy, students go to the library less and find themselves paging through the worn pages of my small classroom library, looking for more.
My students are readers looking for themselves in books.
They want the books to reflect their lives; diverse, complicated, yet exciting. Some students have been reading complicated texts for years, never stuttering when picking up a 300+ page book. Others, however, feel out of place in our school's library, fearing that they will be labeled as an outsider in a club of readers. My school would love to claim that we include all students in all parts of the academic community, but I have heard students proudly proclaim "I've never even been to the library." In an academically competitive school, I have witnessed students 'passing' as readers. These students want to share the books they are reading with others, but for a multitude of reasons never commit to reading. This unfortunate reality is seen as non-reading students fall further behind their reading peers.
My Project
I start my class with 20 minutes of silent reading. This is a tranquil moment that is often lost in a high school setting. By offering a diverse and exciting selection of texts for my students, I know that these moments will become the ones that students will enjoy the most. By etching out this time for students in my class, it naturally creates a dialog between readers. Students share what they are reading now and suggest a new title for their peers. By introducing these new titles to my classroom, students can start to feel safe and comfortable browsing the novels and taking their peers' suggestions.
Literacy is the most important skill with which a student can leave high school.
Literacy is the difference between getting in to college and graduating from a college. I want my students to feel a hunger for knowledge and actively pursue it. If I can hook students with exciting and interesting reading when they are 15 years old, there is no telling where it will lead them, but I know it is a good place.
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