For the LOVE of reading!

Over the years, I've changed how I do reading groups a lot.  One major change?  Give students a TON of choices when it comes to their books.  Often THEY choose their books.  Everyone chose their books this round.  They had to agree on what they'd read, but I was not involved in the choice at all.  More than anything, we are working on SKILLS that can be used with ANY book they read.  Why not teach them these concepts with books THEY picked?  As adults, we can't imagine someone else choosing the books we read, right?

What a FABULOUS way to start 2019!  We are doing a lot of great things in room 306 in reading.  Some kids are working with a partner, while others are meeting in a small group.  Our mini-lessons continue to show kids a new skill/strategy and are meant to be used with any book they may be reading.  Ask them about their sticky notes.  What did they write?  Why did they write it?  What chapter are they reading?  What’s going on in the chapter?  Talking about the books we are reading is such an important part of learning how to be a better reader.  Discussing your thoughts, questions, and ideas about the book is powerful and their ability to do this with any book they read will help them as they progress in school. 

If you are in a book club, talk to your kids about what YOU do when you meet with your book club.  Show them the books you read and something about what you have discussed with your book club.  Because we are meeting with a group (or a partner) when discussing our books, it’s important for kids to set norms for themselves.  As a class, we talked about the importance of having norms (and what they were!) and came up with a list of things we thought were important.  Kids then met with their partner or group and added anything else to their norms they thought was important.  Not only do they have to talk about their books, they need to be able to do so while respecting other people along the way.  Remembering that how we talk to people is just as important as to what we talk with them about.   

OMG.  This was so exciting to read!

 Our latest read aloud is Wishtree by Kathrine Applegate.  It’s such a sweet story!  I love reading books to your kids, as it’s truly one of my favorite parts of my job.  The conversations we have are wonderful.  We have been keeping track of the fabulous vocabulary words that Applegate uses and discussing this interesting and thought-provoking book.  We’ve created our own WISHTREE and it’s absolutely gorgeous.  We will continue to add our wishes to the tree in the upcoming weeks.  Yay!   I’ve tweeted about it a few times and we were all thrilled to have Katherine Applegate herself not only like my tweets, but respond to them as well!  The kids were so excited to hear that she had seen their wishtree!  Twitter is kind of a crazy place, but it sure is incredibly cool to interact with the author of a book you are reading!