Getting our year of reading started!

This year, I have quite a few students who are reading substantially below grade level or are right on the edge of where they need to be. It is so important for me to get a handle on their reading behaviors immediately so we don’t waste any time.  On the first day of school, I gave small groups of students tours of my classroom library. I showed them how the library is organized and how to take care of it.

On the second day of school students had the opportunity to go back into my library and find a book that looked interesting to them. I do let students take home my books… I do not have any checkout system. It is purely the honor system. I do lose 10 to 20 books each year, but it is worth it to me to not have a fancy system that takes management time.  We do start to make a list of “Books I Can’t Wait to Read” that we then add to all year long!  I tell the students they should always know what book or books they want to read next so they don’t waste time looking!

On this day, I also talked to the students about how important it is for me that they learn how to pick books that they love and can’t wait to read every day.  I talked to them about the concept of being “in the zone” and what that means for them. All of them have been “in the zone” playing video games where they couldn’t even hear their name being called for dinner!  We talked about how if you are picking books that really and truly are a good match for you, you can get into the reading zone–just like that!  To do that, we learned the best way to “preview” a book–and I modeled it with our first read aloud, “Shredderman”.

On the third day of school, we started getting into more detail about what a just right book is. We brainstormed together a list of what it means to have a just right book and will make an anchor chart with our findings.  We also completed a reading survey where we spent some time talking about reading behaviors.

We worked on reading stamina as well… and worked on having each student start to make good choices about not just want to read, but where to read and who to read next to as well!  One day at a time . . . the good news is that my students are EAGER to read–but we still need some work on those reading behaviors!  I’ve started sitting down with each child to listen to them read a little bit, so we are well on our way to a great year of reading.  Watch for more posts about independent reading and our progress over the next weeks!