Making Our READ-solutions

It's the time of the year when everyone makes resolutions. We want to lose weight, take more time for ourselves, and generally become better people. Why not take the time to make a READ-solution? I started thinking about this when a parent from my school (who also happens to be a friend) sent me a text about a reading challenge she is going to do this year. Not to be outdone, I started thinking about books that I am hoping to read that might fit each category and decided to join in.

It turns out that one of my sixth grade ELA teachers had also been thinking about reading resolutions and suggested that we have our students make them when they made their first visit of 2018 to the library. After all, we are intentional about spending time reading--why not challenge ourselves. We started the lesson by having the kids define "resolution" and provide examples of resolutions that people traditionally make. After they came up with a few, both the teacher and I shared our twist on the resolution: the READ-solution. Then, kids were asked to write their own READ-solutions on sticky notes that we have used to make a display.

In addition to displaying the sticky notes, I am using the READ-solutions as a guide for upcoming library sessions. For kids who would like to read more historical books, I can do booktalks and a display of historical fiction and nonfiction. Students who expressed that they would like to read more dystopian books will be interested in a list I have curated and shared on my Destiny homepage. For those who are determined to increase their reading stamina, we will spend time reading together each week during their library time.

I loved reading the resolutions that our students made for 2018 and I am determined to help them find ways to meet their goals. It's motivating to have someone working with you to achieve a goal. I have already received a few texts from my friend sharing the categories of the challenge she has fulfilled. I would like to offer the same type of motivation to our students--checking in, offering advice and help, and just generally supporting them as they strive to read more books and read more widely than they have in past years. What is YOUR READ-solution for 2018?

The Great Reading Log Conundrum

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?