We all want to know what our students are reading. Although I talk to kids all day about books, it seems, there is still a lot that needs to be uncovered about what each reader prefers and how much reading kids are actually doing. In the past, I have tried reading logs with varying degrees of success. With over 800 kids in my building this year, paper reading logs would be a lot to keep track of. Instead of going that route, I am trying a Google Form.
I had several thoughts when it was mentioned that we should keep track of student reading with a physical reading log. First, I tend to use an electronic format (GoodReads) as an adult. I'm guessing that is a more natural behavior for students as well--social media as a reading log. I also considered the idea that I wanted a quick, "What did you read? Did you like it?" more than I wanted to create another assignment that needed to be monitored. Since we are moving to using Google Apps for most things in our district, I then considered what it might look like to integrate this into my students' regular use of technology.
After bouncing the idea off a couple of the ELA teachers I work with regularly, I came up with a basic form that might take a student five minutes or less to complete. I want to gather basic data, so I asked about grade level and team, but beyond that, I am looking for a more minimal approach to reporting what was read and liked or disliked. I have connected the form to my library website and am asking the staff to connect it to their blogs and/or Google Classrooms. Since the data comes in on a spreadsheet format, we should be able to look at data by grade level, as well as team. Kids can easily complete the form during their library time, as well as any other time they have technology in their hands.
I'm hopeful that this solution will give me a window into the reading interests of my students, as well as provide much-needed data reading patterns of middle school students in general. What format(s) are you using or have you used to collect reading data in your classroom or school?
