I recently read the blog post What the Kardashians Taught me About Reading (No, For Real) written by Chris Lehman, co-author (with Lucy Calkins) of Pathways to the Common Core. To be honest, I love reading everything written by Chris, but I saw this tweeted several times and ignored it, because I couldn't care less about the Kardashians. I'm not sure what got me to finally read it, but when I did I read it several times through. Please take a few moments to read the article HERE which is actually on Donalyn Miller's blog at Edweek (the author of The Book Whisperer that I raved about last year).OK, you read it now, right?
Here is what stood out to me, that I'm still thinking about...
Brand Yourself as a Reader, So Your Students Will Emulate
Lehmann writes about using the Kardashians as a metaphor for how we can see our instruction in a new light. He says, "we need to take a lesson from Ms. K and brand ourselves as readers just as carefully so our students have that vision to aspire to."
Are you known as a reader to your students? Do your colleagues know they can ask you for a book recommendation or share with you a book they just finished reading?
This has me wondering if you all think of me as a reader? I have certainly tried to by sharing my Shelfari account bookshelf on my blog and sharing my reflections of what I'm reading and learning about. Do students think of me as a reader? After reading this article (which I have actually read several times) I want to start my own little bulletin board in the media center to post a picture of what childrens' book I am currently reading to model for our students.
There were several other great ideas shared in the comments section of the blog post that made me wonder if any of you would be willing to share your ideas on this in the comments of this blog post? If you've never gone from the emailed post to the blog, go to johnsonmemo.blogspot.com and scroll to the bottom of the post and click where it says No Comments. This will open up a box for you to add your comment of ideas to share with the rest of us.
I actually was inspired by Donalyn Miller to keep track of books read in my family life as well as my school life to share my love of reading, and I guess, to show that I am a reader to my children and students.
ReplyDeleteAs a family, we keep track of what books each of us have read on the refrigerator and when we finish a book, we share it with each other. I love hearing about books my husband reads since his tastes are so different from mine. It expands my book knowledge. (Ask him about 11/22/63 by Stephen King sometime!)
In my school life, I post pictures of book covers by my name and my students' names to show what books we are reading in the hall. The students replace the pictures as they finish books and have an individual graph to keep track of what kinds of books they are reading. We have a large scale graph in the hall to show what books we collectively have read in each genre. We have many picture books and nonfiction books so far this quarter. No takers on Biographies yet though. I read a great biography last year on Harriet Tubman that students enjoyed, but it hasn't encouraged students to check out this genre independently yet.
However, what I've always done to show that I'm a reader is to ask students to tell me about books they like, to discuss books that I've read, take an interest in what they are reading and have conversations with many students a day about books; whether they are in my classroom or not. I had a great experience a couple of weeks ago when a student showed up at the door and asked if I'd like to read a book she finished because she thought I would like it. (Of course, I had to read it right away then!) I hope this shows others that I love to read.