Working Toward Our Goal

As we continue to work toward our goal of moving our sixth grade group forward as readers, we try new activities each week. Last week we had the students choose new books, settle in, and read them. Their stamina has grown in just a few weeks to the point where they didn't become restless until almost 25 minutes into reading. We were so thrilled to see them reading and enjoying their books.

Following reading time, we asked each student to sketch the cover of the book they read and write at least one reason they chose the book. They completed this pretty quickly and then used the microphone and document camera to share their books and reasons with the class. It was fun to listen to the students compliment one another on their sketches and comment that they were interested in one another's books. We are building a community of readers with this group--and they are reading at least 90 additional minutes per week!

This activity worked well and went quickly. I have been thinking about several variations we might use in the future: sketch a scene and write about its importance to the story, sketch a character and write about why he/she is like you or not like you, make a Thinking Map using an idea from the book . . . the possibilities are endless. What quick activities have you used to foster a reading community?

 The Gray Wolf Throne by Cinda Williams Chima

 Clash of the Demons by Joseph Delaney

 Dear Julia by Amy Bronwen Zemser

 The Titan's Curse: The Graphic Novel by Robert Venditti

 The Usborne Introduction to the Second World War by Paul Dowswell

The Ascension by Michael Carroll

Goal Setting and Getting to Know a Class

With about 780 students each year, it takes me time to get to know everyone. The sixth graders are especially difficult because they are all new at once and generally only visit once every two weeks. As part of the evaluation process, I have to set a personal growth goal that will also impact my students. After the second visit of one of our new sixth grade groups I knew I wanted to set a goal to work with them to help increase their interest in reading in order to help improve their literacy skills.

During their visit, I noticed that the students had very little direction and seemed to be struggling to make any decisions at all. Then, after they had books in their hands, most were reluctant to settle in and read. This may be the result of a combination of factors, any of which would cause issues. In order to get to the root of this and help the students make better book choices, I approached their teacher about using that class for my goal. Not only was she willing, but she also set a similar goal and we purposed to work together throughout the year to help these students.

We agreed to start with having this class visit the library weekly instead of bi-weekly. This change will allow further positive interactions. In addition, these students generally have higher needs, so they will benefit from the attention of an extra adult for one day each week. We also decided to pull out some of our professional reading resources and think through some ways to focus on the needs of each student. We have both read The Book Whisperer by Donalyn Miller and decided that the best place to start was with a survey to get to know our students better. We used a lot of the questions from the book, but modified some and added some of our own. I was able to write the survey and my colleague put it into a Google Form so our students could fill in their answers using iPads. We now have data on each student that can inform our future steps.

 There were a few surprises about giving the survey. I thought that they students would jump at the chance to tell us about themselves. However, they just viewed the survey as more work and took some convincing to settle in and complete the questions. They complained about the length, which, again, I thought they might not notice due to using the iPads instead of paper/pencil. The other thing I noticed without looking too closely at the data is that these students spent a long time listing television shows (Q5). I wanted to have an idea of pop cultural interests so that I could find books with similar themes, but I had no idea just how much TV these students watch. It will be a challenge to draw them into books and away from television.

I will spend the next few days looking at the survey data and then developing the activity for this week. I would like to do a book pass, but with the intention of drawing books from the shelves that closely match the interests listed on the surveys. I'm looking forward to developing a relationship with this class and finding ways to draw them into books and reading as a part of their daily lives.