25 Book Challenge!

The 2014 25 Book Challenge! Compiled by Paula Bourque www.litcoachlady.com Paula Bourque 2014 Research Supports This! Children get better at reading BY reading. The research shows that children who read more have higher vocabularies, score better on standardized tests, show greater verbal intelligence, demonstrate greater declarative knowledge, have expanded world knowledge, improved memories, have reduced stress and increased empathy So HOW do we get our students to be HIGH VOLUME readers? 1. It becomes the expectation. 2. We create the conditions to make it happen. Paula Bourque 2014 The Expectation If we really want our students to develop lifelong love of reading they need to develop reading habits. In his book Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell examined what factors led to high levels of success. From his research he hypothesized the “10,000 Hour Rule”. His claim was that the key to success was practicing a task for at least 10,000 hours. (That’s 600,000 minutes) If our students only read 20 minutes a day it would take them 30,000 days to meet his criteria (82 years!). If they read for 2 hours a day it would only take 5,000 days! That’s about 13 ½ years. Just about the amount of time we have children in public school. 2 hours a day is not unreasonable for most of our kids, IF we have time in our school days devoted to immersion in reading. I’m not talking the old model of ‘the book flood’ where you just have books available and reading takes place through osmosis. But, time with REAL reading tasks could replace some of the isolated skill work students are sometimes asked to do. Reading aloud to our students EVERY day would be part of this time. Time can be difficult to track however. Unless you have a stopwatch with start and stop and recording features it becomes cumbersome to log the minutes spent reading each day. What IS easy is tracking the number of books you read. Setting a high expectation for volume reading IS a reasonable goal for teachers to have for their students. WHY 25 or 40? The number is arbitrary, but the reasoning is consistent. We have about 20 weeks of school left starting in January. That is asking students to read about 1 book a week and then 5 more. If a student reads a particularly long book one week, he or she could read a few shorter books the next. Some students may say, “ha…that’s easy, I’m going to read 40 picture books.” I’d say, “GREAT! That’s 40 books he or she probably never would have given the time of day.” I also believe that when they see the books their peers are reading, that they will diversify their selections. WHAT ABOUT TYPE OF BOOKS? To help students branch out and nudge away from their “preferred genre comfort zone” you could set some expectations for that as well. I have included some examples that might help you in the appendix, but YOU as their teacher, are best able to set requirements/expectations that reflect your students’ needs. Paula Bourque 2014 The Conditions For this to be successful, YOU must create conditions for success. Here are some structures you could put into place to help you and your students become HIGH VOLUME readers this year. 1. Have LOTS, and LOTS, and LOTS of books available for your students. Principals have been very supportive in building classroom libraries. Other resources might include: • Library books- check-out books that must remain in the classroom if they are signed out in your name. • Donations- o at holidays have students gift a book to the classroom, wrap it up and sign a Donated By____ inside the front cover. o For birthdays encourage students to give a book to their class and mark “In honor of _____’s ___th birthday” on the inside cover instead of bringing in cupcakes. o Donor’s Choose lets you set up a project for your classroom. Many teachers have filled their classroom libraries with this approach. www.donorschoose.org o Ask students to bring in gently used books that they are no longer reading. • Discount books – o Scholastic book orders and book fairs offer low cost or sometimes free books. o Goodwill stores often have books for as little as 25 cents! o Yard sales!!! ‘nuff said. • Book Swaps- School-wide or classroom based, children bring in books they are done reading and swap it for a book that another student has brought in. Bring in 2 books, take 2 books! • Don’t forget online resources like We Give Books Time for Kids Giggle Poetry Magic Keys Book Adventure Oxford Owl or many others. 2. Have LOTS and LOTS and LOTS of time for reading. We can’t add more time to our school day, but we can look for opportunities to maximize the time we have. • Beginning and end of the day. Many teachers have entry tasks for students when they come into class in the morning or routines for end of the day when waiting for the bus. Replace some of those routines with TIME for reading. Make it the expectation and reinforce it. • DAILY 5- many teachers have Read to Self built into their independent Paula Bourque 2014 work during Daily 5 or Daily 3. This is perfect, because ‘getting started right away, reading the whole time, and having a just right book’ are exactly what we want students to be doing to maximize their reading time. • Transitions-many teachers optimize their transition time by inviting students to read the books at their seat while waiting to line up, get drinks, use the bathroom, change activities, etc. Every little bit here or there adds up. • Replace some seatwork with reading. The research looked at by The Book Whisperer, Donalyn Miller shows students’ achievement is higher with authentic reading rather than seat work with D.O.L., grammar or comprehension activities. You know your kids best so I won’t ever say, “no seat work”, but I encourage you to weigh the benefits of sustained reading versus the assigned task and choose the one YOU think best helps your students become strong readers. • Assign reading- sometime teachers feel guilty that their lesson plans say SSR or SQUIRT because they feel like they aren’t offering direct instruction. You don’t stop being a teacher when your kids are reading so don’t feel guilty. This is a great time to conference with students about how it’s going with their reading, take a running record, find out their reading interests, suggest new titles, etc. 3. Have a manageable accountability system. The adage, students respect what you inspect is certainly true. They need to know you are serious and that you are there to support them reaching their goals. How can we keep track and ensure accountability without creating loads more work for ourselves? Here are few of the many ways to do this. • Reader’s notebooks. Simple spiral bound, cheap books are best. I will include some examples of pages you might want to copy and tape/glue on the first few pages, but don’t invest in expensive books unless you won the lottery! • Charts and Boards. Have charts that track student books read (or even entire class totals) that students complete rather than the teacher. Create bulletin boards that promote HIGH VOLUME reading. I’ve enclosed some ideas in the appendix. • Status of the Class. On a simple clipboard have the students’ names and dates (see appendix). Students report the book they are reading and the page they are on at some point during the day. (teacher decides) This helps you to know how quickly or slowly students are moving through books, if books are abandoned, when new books are started, etc. Paula Bourque 2014 • Parent Slips. Send home a congratulations note when a student finishes a book. These can be premade, or students are allowed to create one (don’t let this take away too much time from real reading) This keeps the parents involved and informed. This is different from making parents sign slips. This is often a frustrating endeavor for teachers because some students don’t return slips, parents don’t sign slips, etc. Think about what your goal is. If it is just to make sure students are reading and parents are aware, a simple celebration note will do the trick. Parents may begin to ask their children about their reading and anticipate the next note without feeling a ‘burden’ of responsibility. 4. Promote an environment that is PASSIONATE about reading If YOU are passionate about reading and share that passion with your students it will be infectious! For those reading Teach Like a Pirate, you know just how powerful an influence passion is on a learning environment. How can we generate passion for reading! • Share our reading lives. Show are students that reading is not just an academic assignment, it is a way of life!! Talk about the books you are reading, or that your husband or children are reading. Bring them in and read with them occasionally. Share your excitement for new books you have heard about or want to read! Show them your list of “To Read” books. • Create a virtual reading world. Sites like Shelfari, KidBlog Goodreads or LibraryThing let kids connect with other readers, follow others’ recommendations and post their own thoughts about reading. • Create a class blog (Kidblog) so that students can post about their books at home as well as school.

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