How to accelerate a reader

A great post from Donalyn Miller in her Book Whisperer blog
http://blogs.edweek.org/teachers/book_whisperer/2010/09/reading_rewarded_part_ii.html

An extract :

Abundant reading research proves that the following components of an independent reading program increase students' reading achievement and motivation to read:

• Access to books: Students need access to a wide array of reading materials at their independent level.
• Time to read: Students need consistent, daily time to read at school.
• Reading engagement: Students need classroom conditions that engage them with reading and foster reading self-efficacy.
• School-wide support: Schools must create a culture of reading that values reading in all subject areas.
• Well-stocked libraries with qualified librarians: School library collections should contain current, well-maintained collections of interesting reading material manned by trained, licensed librarians.
• Student choice: Students need frequent opportunities to select their own reading materials for both personal and academic reasons.

Mysteries and reading plans

The late Carol Otis Hurst was a storyteller, lecturer, author and language arts consultant in the USA and had been an elementary school teacher, librarian and author. Her children's literature website is now ably continued by her daughter, Rebecca Otis, with reviews of great books for kids, ideas of ways to use them in the classroom and collections of books and activities about particular subjects, curriculum areas, themes and professional topics.

You can sign up for free, quarterly email newsletters, and the September issue features Mysteries in the classroom for preschool to junior secondary level, fiction and non-fiction, and some ideas for classroom discussion and activities :
http://www.carolhurst.com/newsletters/1503newsletters.html
This could be a great way to hook some students into the mystery genre.

My niece is 6 and loving the Milo and Jazz series of mysteries - it is the first time I've heard her read a book, notice other titles in the series and request all five... an example of having a "reading plan" which is an important element in becoming an avid reader.

Donald Graves, quoted in Nancie Atwell's The Reading Zone, once said that he thought a revealing measure of the effectiveness of a reading programme or literature curriculum was whether students had plans as readers : ideas about what they want to read next or whom they want to read next...

Steven Layne gives his students a Someday template to note down any possible books for future reading - for older students it is called Books to consider, and he talks about choosing books from the library as "going shopping".

Donalyn Miller in her end of year survey asks her students "Which topics, authors, series, titles etc do you plan to read in the future?"
(Read her September 5 2010 blog post about how to accelerate a reader - not through commercial programmes but the tried and true elements of access to books, time to read, reading engagement, school-wide support, well stocked libraries with qualified librarians, student choice - hear, hear.)

Twitter, blogs and Donalyn Miller

An interesting blogger, Donalyn Miller aka "The book whisperer" did a post in April on Twitter and how she uses it to keep in touch with the children's literature world...

http://blogs.edweek.org/teachers/book_whisperer/

"Instant access via Twitter to book reviews, author appearances, and links offers teachers and librarians opportunities for finding books, resources, and like-minded colleagues beyond the walls of our schools, and streamlines the unwieldy process of following blogs and bookmarking review and author websites...."

And she also posted recently about two great blogs she follows which I also really enjoy -
Jen Robinson's Book Page http://jkrbooks.typepad.com/blog/
and Fuse #8 by Elizabeth Bird http://www.schoollibraryjournal.com/blog/1790000379.html

Share a story / shape a future

I've promoted before on this blog the wonderful Donalyn Miller, both her blog http://blogs.edweek.org/teachers/book_whisperer/
and her book of the same title : The Book Whisperer: Awakening the Inner Reader in Every Child by Donalyn Miller ISBN: 978-0-470-37227-2 Paperback 240 pages March 2009



Her blog took part in th US reading promotion Share a story, shape a future 2010
Here is a post about it from The Book Whisperer http://blogs.edweek.org/teachers/book_whisperer/
Follow the links to explore some other great blogs...

Share a Story Shape a Future is an annual blog event to promote literacy, celebrate books, and provide resources for parents, teachers, and readers everywhere. This year's theme is "It Takes a Village to Raise a Reader." Join us March 8th to March 12th.

Each day a different kidlitosphere blogger serves as host for the posting of several other bloggers. You may visit the host blogs' sites to find a complete blog roll for each day.

March 8th: The Many Faces of Reading

Host: Terry Doherty at Scrub-A-Dub-Tub

Topics of the day will encompass the relationship aspect of helping children learn to read: parent-child and teacher-parent partnerships, literacy outreach; and libraries, to name a few.

March 9th: Literacy My Way/Literacy Your Way

Host: Susan Stephenson at The Book Chook

Creative literacy in all its forms (writing, art, computers) will be the topic of the day.

March 10th: Just the Facts: The Nonfiction Book Hook

Host: Sarah Mulhern at The Reading Zone

This is the day for exploring the different genres of nonfiction (biography and memoir, science, nature, math, etc), as well as the use (or not) of historical fiction.

March 11th: Reading Through the Ages: Old Faves & New Classics

Host: Donalyn Miller at The Book Whisperer

Bloggers will share thematic book lists that include newer titles and the classics we loved as kids.

March 12th: Reading for the Next Generation

Host: Jen Robinson at Jen Robinson's Book Page

Join us as we talk about how to approach reading when your interests and your child's don't match. It may be that you don't like to read but your child does, how to raise the reader you're not, and dealing with the "pressure" of feeling forced to read.

Book Whisperer on home reading

One of my favourite bloggers is Donalyn Miller - her blog is called the Book Whisperer - (see previous posts in this blog).

Here is a link to a recent post about her letter to parents of students in her class on the importance of home reading...
http://blogs.edweek.org/teachers/book_whisperer/2010/01/dear_parents_at-home_reading.html

Boy readers and the Book Whisperer

Donalyn Miller, "the book whisperer", writes a blog I enjoy - her latest post is about the boy readers in her class http://blogs.edweek.org/teachers/book_whisperer/

She mentions some titles her boys (and many girls) love to read this year:

• The Hunger Games and Catching Fire by Suzanne Collins
• Found and Sent by Margaret Peterson Haddix
• Alex Rider series by Anthony Horowitz
• The Diary of a Wimpy Kid series by Jeff Kinney
• Percy Jackson and the Olympians series by Rick Riordan
• Bone graphic novels by Jeff Smith
• Peak by Roland Smith (all of Smith's books are perennial favorites)
• Killer Pizza by Greg Taylor
• The Heir Chronicles by Cinda Williams Chima

For more information on supporting boy readers, check out author and boy reading advocate, Jon Scieszka's retooled Guys Read website.

The English Companion Ning

A ning is an online social platform (like MySpace or Facebook) for people to create their own social networks around specific interests...
Ning is the Chinese word for peace. www.ning.com

Here is an article http://www.teachersourcebook.org/tsb/articles/2009/10/01/01ning.h03.html about a ning for English teachers called The English Companion started in December 2008 by English teacher and author Jim Burke. It shows the potential of online social networking to break the culture of professional isolation.

It's tagline is "where English teachers meet to help each other" and describes itself as "A place to ask questions and get help. A community dedicated to helping you enjoy your work. A cafe without walls or coffee: just friends." http://englishcompanion.ning.com/

Burke's Ning exceeded his expectations for a virtual meeting ground. In roughly six months, The English Companion Ning, which Burke refers to as "the world's largest English department, without the meetings," catapulted to close to 6,000 members of all ages and levels of teaching experience from five continents. "What's kind of fascinating and scary about Web 2.0 and Ning is that you can create it quickly and before you know it, its got a huge following," he notes.

Nings have borrowed the tools of Facebook and MySpace—the ability to post a personal profile, upload media, and have multiple asynchronous and synchronous conversations—while allowing for the customization around a particular subject. Members contribute content, while the administrator can meddle as little or as much as he or she wants. Members return not only to post, but also for the opportunity of discovery.

I have explored it and found it interesting. I went to the Reading Strategies and followed a discussion about teaching students inference - teachers have shared various pdf documents and powerpoints with examples from their own teaching...

The English Companion bookclub feature book for October 09 is Donalyn Miller The Book Whisperer: Awakening the Inner Reader in Every Child (which I did a LibraryZest post about in September 09 with the label Book Whisperer).

Library staff may want to draw English teachers' attention to it in case it is of interest and use ?

Skerricks & Book Whisperer blogs, and class novel sets...

Bridget Schaumann mentioned the Skerricks blog on the list serv this morning and though I've visited it before, now I can highlight and share it on my blog !

It is produced by Ruth Buchanan, a Teacher Librarian in Australia, and she says that "a blog is a great way to share the stuff my flypaper mind finds amid the internet jungle". It has won awards including the SLAV (School Library Association of Victoria) Bright Ideas award as the most nominated Australian school library blog 2009 - and the Zombie Chickens award - visit her blog to find out what that is about...

It is a great place to explore and browse, you are bound to find something interesting and inspiring - and if you want to really roam, check out the links to blogs that she follows... Here is the link http://skerricks.blogspot.com and I've added it to the list of blogs on the right.

The post that Bridget was highlighting was about a New York Times article about a teacher who lets students choose their own reading :
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/30/books/30reading.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1
"The approach Ms. McNeill uses, in which students choose their own books, discuss them individually with their teacher and one another, and keep detailed journals about their reading, is part of a movement to revolutionize the way literature is taught in America’s schools. While there is no clear consensus among English teachers, variations on the approach, known as reading workshop, are catching on. "

Donalyn Miller, a Texan teacher known as "the Book Whisperer", has done a great post on her blog too (also linked on the right) about the perils, the torture, of class novels - here is the link - http://blogs.edweek.org/teachers/book_whisperer/2008/01/

"One Size Does Not Fit All
My seventeen year-old-daughter is what we call here in Texas, “a long, tall drink of water." I, on the other hand, have a full-figured glass that has overflowed. When shopping, we laugh when we see clothes sporting tags that claim “one size fits all” remarking, “Not us!” Stretch this t-shirt over the ubiquitous practice in reading classrooms of teaching whole-class novels, and you can see that it doesn't fit most readers..."

and her latest post picks up on the NY Times article mentioned above - here is what she has to say on it "... the New York Times [has] announced that The Future of Reading is "reading workshop". Describing one teacher’s journey to implement reading workshop with her middle school students, the article explores the messy challenges and smalls triumphs of a classroom environment where children choose the books they read. It bewilders me that reading workshop, first introduced to practicing teachers in works like In the Middle by Nancie Atwell (written in 1987), is still seen as groundbreaking or newsworthy. I continually wonder how activities like reading one book as a class, dissecting classics, and presenting book reports become entrenched in reading classrooms for generations while ideas like allowing student choices, reading contemporary literature, and writing authentic reading responses fail to gain a foothold in many English classes..."

I've bought a copy of Donalyn Miller's book published this year - The Book Whisperer: Awakening the Inner Reader in Every Child (9780470372272). In it she describes how she is so successful at getting her students reading - simply put, it is by being a powerful reading role model herself, knowing the literature, providing easy, plentiful access to a range of books, expecting every child to be a reader, and responding in a lively way to the students' reading responses...