for the LOVE of reading
This blog post topic had me instantly inspired. I am an avid reader myself and I am constantly looking for ways to inspire reading in children. I was thinking back to my childhood and trying to figure out how or why I grew to love reading so much. One of the things that stands out for me the most is my moms influence. She was always reading novels and talking to me about why she loved reading. She read to me every night and when I could read myself we still shared a mutual love of stories and read together. Having that inspiring adult in your life really makes a difference and a strong Teacher Librarian is the perfect person to foster a love of reading.
One of the ways that I think inspires readers is by having a cozy, inspiring, inviting spot that makes you want to curl up with a book. In my future library having a space like this would be very important to me to create. It would be so neat to have a space that could change and adapt to keep interest in the space alive.
In my 6 years in the classroom one of the most simple yet motivating things for students is reading with a friend. Every year I incorporate 'read to someone' into the daily schedule as there are so many benefits from children collaborating with a book. We talk about the different ways you can read with a friend; they alternate reading a sentence, or the stronger reader can read and the other student can repeat it back, or they each have a book and take turns reading a page from their book. Having many different levels of accessibility will foster a confidence in readers that may be at a lower level.
I also found a few interesting ideas online that could be adapted to use in a school library or in a classroom:
1. Book Calendar: 24 Days of Christmas or 8 Days of Hanukkah. One of my other diploma courses had us subscribe to a wide teacher-librarians' community through a website called LM_NET. I get daily emails with topics/questions and suggestions brought up by teacher librarians from all over. As I was starting to think about this blog post it just so happened a great idea popped up from LM_NET. This idea was from a librarian at the University of Wisconsin. This idea is to make a sort of advent calendar with books. You would wrap up a book for each day (they do not have to be new books), then the children get to unwrap and read it with you. I know that having it be centered around Christmas might not work in some school so you could adapt the title and it could be called the Holiday book countdown or something appropriate for your school.
2. Story WorkshopsI found this blog through a comment on my fellow classmate Heather Romaine's blog. It named the author of the 'Inquiry Mindset' book who I realized is a Kindergarten teacher who I am going to be substitute teaching for this Friday. I explored her website a little bit and found her blog which has amazing ideas for incorporating inquiry and literacy together. This particular post is about 'Story Workshops' where they read an inspiring book multiple times and then the children choose if they want to create or retell the story with props or on paper. Another level to the process can be documenting their story. This would be incredible to do as a teacher librarian as it seems to me it is more difficult to do inquiry projects with the very young children (at least at the beginning of the year). You could read a story and inspire the children and send a basket of props back to the room for them to use in their classroom to continue with the story telling (as you probably only see them once a week). I think allowing them to be creative and use props to tell stories in their own words would definitely ignite a love reading.
3. Reader Personality Test
This is a great online resource that you could use with older children to help them identify the kinds of characters and books they like. You go through and answer ten questions. Next it gives four reader personalities at the end and tells you how many answers you gave for that reader personality. They can click on a some of the reader personality types to find out more information and it will even suggest book titles they might like (a picture of the title page and the name of the book appears).
Well I am feeling inspired ... better go pick up my book! ❤
References
A Book And A Hug. (2018). Reader Personality Types. [online] Available at: https://abookandahug.com/reader-types/ [Accessed 5 Oct. 2018].
Bathurst-Hunt, R. (2018). Wonder Wednesday: Story Workshop [Blog] Inquiry Teacher Blog. Available at: https://rbathursthuntblog.wordpress.com/2018/09/05/wonder-wednesday-story-workshop/ [Accessed 3 Oct. 2018].
McElmeel, S. (2018). Book Calendar: 24 Days of Christmas or 8 Days of Hanukkah. [Blog] McBook Works. Available at: https://mcbookwords.blogspot.com/2018/10/book-calendar.html [Accessed 3 Oct. 2018].
I love the Christmas book idea...thanks for sharing. Rebecca had some great ideas for inquiry learning in her book and at a workshop I attended. One idea was to use giphy.com as provocations for thinking and learning. I've already tried several and the kids love them.
ReplyDeleteAs for the inviting space...I do wish that we were able to have more things like that in our district but our fire regulations are SO strict. We can have anything hanging or anything that isn't fire-rated for Canada. I guess our Central Saanich firefighters are stricter that the Victoria ones as I know Rebecca has some cool learning spaces in her class with large scarves draping over areas to make reading nooks.
I'm not sure which classmate this is as it shows up as unknown but thanks again for the comment and the information that led to learning more about Rebecca's great work with inquiry. I love the idea of giphy.com! So simple and relevant to children today.
DeleteI never even thought about fire regulation's impeding a cozy reading space but that sadly makes sense.
First I have to say, Hannah….your chosen images definitely embody the cozy and inspiring reading spots you wrote about! I just wanna curl up in one of them! Your beautiful memories of reading with your mom is just amazing. A gift of reading from your mom! Do our reluctant readers have role models that read to them when they were younger, I wonder? For our family, our eldest son has always loved to read. He could literally sit for 2 hours (as long as I could stay awake reading) at age 2 and listen to books being read to him. He began reading on his own long before I knew he could and skipped the whole sounding it out process, and I know we lucked out there. As soon as his younger brother was old enough to hold a book on his own, he would sit beside his brother just emulating him! I am sure his book was upside down half the time, but it got him interested in books. The next two siblings had reader role models in their brothers and they can all sit for HOURS reading still today. Having a good role model can be so important.
ReplyDeleteWhat a great opportunity for you to get to be a TOC in Mrs. Bathurst-Hunt’s class! She seems so inspiring the way she intertwines literacy, drama, language development, writing and all with the children learning french with great indigenous books. To read her blog and then to see her class in action with the things she writes about will be inspiring and educational I am sure! How did it go and did you snag a bunch of great ideas?
So nice to hear about your families love of reading developed. That sibling involvement is so important too and special that your children helped their siblings see how wonderful reading can be.
DeleteMy day in Rebecca's class was FANTASTIC. Just the classroom set and environment alone was so inspiring. Without getting to talk to Rebecca in person, I mainly took away set up ideas. She had so many interesting materials for kids to use for storytelling and role play.
Her students each had these little quiet literacy bins where they took them to a spot, looked through some early reader books and then responded to the books by drawing about their favorite part. It was a simple and effective way to get Kindergarten's engaged with reading (even though they weren't actually sounding words out yet).
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DeleteWell, this is take two, as there was a glitch on my first attempt!
DeleteI have to agree with Heather, I was immediately drawn to your images of reading spots. This is something we are currently looking at in our library, as we have a very traditional set-up. Unfortunately, we also lack space to create these areas. For now, we have ordered some bean bag chairs, which students will be able to use in a quiet corner for some individual or buddy reading. This idea originated when thinking about some of our "busy" primary students that often visit our Learning Center when they need a break. These visits can at times interfere with some of the small group lessons taking place. We thought the library would be a good, quiet place for those students to come with a book or iPad, to take a short break. As the teacher/librarian, I have been fortunate to build bonds with many of these students, and would love to have them check-in and make the library a part of their routine. Hopefully, this will also help take some of the distraction that can happen, away from our resource team. Once we have this system established, then I will start looking at creative ways to arrange our library, and hopefully create a cozy and inviting area for all students to enjoy and read!
The other aspect of your post that I really enjoyed was the Reading Personality Questionnaire. As I mentioned in my blog post, we recently upgraded our non-fiction section, to better fit our primary students. They would often ask for books about machines, cars, trucks, animals, and space. We decided to create a larger "Jr. Non-Fiction" section, keeping those books out of the general non-fiction section. The response has been amazing! However, when it comes to our intermediate students, we often get the "I don't know what I like..." when trying to suggest a book or series. Having a short test/questionnaire that could identify some of their interests and possible topics of choice for reading material is a great idea. I will definitely be trying this with some of my regulars that moan and groan when trying to select books!
Thank you for sharing, have a great Thanksgiving!
Darryl
You did a great job on this post in sharing what simple little changes and approaches can have on a student. Having an adult encourage and role modeling good reading, creating cozy comfortable spots to snuggle into, building buzz around new books with an advent calendar of new books, these are all great ideas and good examples for others to borrow. Your post generated some excellent discussion and comments as well and showcases some excellent strategies for getting your school community on board. Adding some labels to your blog posts as subject headings can allow you to easily organize and sort your blog posts into important subjects later. Good embedding of media, links and references.
ReplyDeleteHannah, I loved the images you selected for this post. We've been talking about creating a cozy reading corner in our library, but we've not made any moves yet due to the fact that we are currently sharing our library space with a Distance Learning school run by our district. They are scheduled to move to another building at the end of this year. At the high school level we also need to think careful about the creation of cozy spaces, as there have been a few instances already of students using this type of a space for romance rather than reading.
ReplyDeleteI also love the advent calendar idea and I am busily thinking about how I might use it with a high school English class. I wonder if we could unwrap a series of poems or a series of short stories, or even a new song.
Hannah, the comment above, which says it was by Amber Christenson was from me. Amber was not logged off the computer I was using, so I did not realize it would show her name. Here is my comment again:
ReplyDeleteI loved the images you selected for this post. We've been talking about creating a cozy reading corner in our library, but we've not made any moves yet due to the fact that we are currently sharing our library space with a Distance Learning school run by our district. They are scheduled to move to another building at the end of this year. At the high school level we also need to think careful about the creation of cozy spaces, as there have been a few instances already of students using this type of a space for romance rather than reading.
I also love the advent calendar idea and I am busily thinking about how I might use it with a high school English class. I wonder if we could unwrap a series of poems or a series of short stories, or even a new song.