Creating Lifelong Readers

Giving students choice in the books they read

Beth ShaumSt. Paul Catholic SchoolGrosse Pointe Farms, MIbethshaum@gmail.comTwitter: @FoodieBooklvr

A Story…

What are we doing in our classrooms to cause students to hate reading?

Assigning books they don’t connect with Assigning one book for a whole class of

students with disparate reading abilities Showing that the only value in reading

is when someone assigns it

Why choice?

Meets students where they’re at, not where I expect them to be

Moves students up their personal ladder of reading (Lesesne, 2010)

Lifelong readers create lifelong learners Empowers students with autonomy, mastery

and purpose (Pink, 2009)

Why choice? Autonomy – the desire to

direct our own livesMastery – the urge to

make progress and get better at something

Purpose – the yearning to do what we do in service of something larger than ourselves (Pink, 2009)

Why choice?

Criticisms of choice

Surely students can’t learn the skills they need without shared reading experiences.

Students need The Classics! How do students gain cultural capital by

not reading “great works of literature” with a knowledgeable teacher?

Criticism: Students need shared reading experiences Limit number of whole class texts, don’t

eliminate them entirely– Adopt a 50/50 approach: 50% choice, 50%

assigned reading (Gallagher, 2009) Read alouds

– When did this only become important to elementary students? “Big kids” need models of good reading too!

Short stories & poems– Learn literary elements through short pieces of

text and have students apply these elements to their personal reading

Example: literature theme notebooks

Criticism: Students need The Classics! Use the 50/50 approach Students won’t appreciate and respond

to The Classics unless teachers show they respect students’ own reading choices

Classics were not written with teens in mind – there are just as many great literary, contemporary YA titles teachers can use as there are classic texts

Non-exhaustive list of contemporary, literary YA writers you can use in addition to classics:

Laurie Halse Anderson

Kenneth Oppel John Green Lauren Oliver Libba Bray A.S. King Elizabeth Wein Jay Asher

Suzanne Collins M.T. Anderson Laini Taylor Maggie Stiefvater Markus Zusak Jennifer Donnelly Patrick Ness Jacqueline Woodson Chris Crutcher Angela Johnson

Choice does not have to be a free-for-all

Example of the genre requirement form I use with my 6th graders

“You don’t have to burn books to destroy culture. Just get people to stop reading them.” – Ray Bradbury

Is this what we’re doing to our kids?

It’s not rocket science…

…and they all lived happily ever after?

Beth ShaumSt. Paul Catholic SchoolGrosse Pointe Farms, MI bethshaum@gmail.comTwitter: @FoodieBooklvr

References and Works CitedGallagher, K. (2009). Readicide how schools are killing reading and what

you can do about it. Portland, Me.: Stenhouse Publishers.

Kittle, P. (2011). Penny Kittle – Reading Workshop Handouts. Penny Kittle. Retrieved October 6, 2012, from http://www.pennykittle.net/uploads/pdf/ReadingWorkshophandouts.pdf

Lesesne, T. S. (2010). Reading ladders: leading students from where they are to where we'd like them to be. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.

Miller, D. (2009). The book whisperer: awakening the inner reader in every child. San Francisco, Calif.: Jossey-Bass.

Pink, D. H. (2009). Drive: the surprising truth about what motivates us. New York, NY: Riverhead Books.