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.)

Carol Otis Hurst website & newsletter

A good website to visit is http://www.carolhurst.com which introduces itself as "a collection of 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 subscribe to a (free) online quarterly newsletter from the site, which, though it has a US focus in reviews and topics, could be useful for ideas - the latest newsletter has a booklist of "time fantasies" including old favourites like Tuck Everlasting, and Tom's Midnight Garden.

Carol Hurst was a great advocate for children's books and how they could be used in the classroom - she was an author, storyteller, lecturer, consultant, teacher and librarian. She died in 2007, and her daughter Rebecca Otis Hurst is continuing her work on the website / newsletter.