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Create An Inviting Classroom Library |
| Date Added: May 19, 2008 09:52:01 AM |
| Category: Education: Business to Business |
| When I support a school district with improving reading and motivating middle school students to read, I always interview dozens of students from each grade during my first two visits. I find that middle school students are candid, and these interviews often spotlight students' needs and provide me with the data I need to work with administrators and teachers. David (pseudonym) was the first seventh grader I interviewed on my first day at his school. When I asked him how I could help improve his reading, he blurted: "Give me words. Oh, yeah," David added, "and stuff I can read." Indeed, when I reviewed David's standardized testing and the Independent Reading Inventories teachers had administered in the past, David and too many other students at this school had weak vocabularies and were so far behind their grade level that they weren't able to read the grade level anthology in language arts classes and the textbooks in science and social studies. Outside of school David read "some comics," but not books or magazines. "Man, I don't touch those," he told me. The language arts classrooms in David's school had no libraries. Moreover, the school's library was inadequate and manned by parent volunteers who were not there all the time and who lacked the training and authority to order books and magazines. Readers like David, who needed access to books to practice reading to enlarge their vocabularies and background knowledge, lost reading ground each year. The first initiative teachers, parents, and administrators rallied around was to raise money for rich and varied classrooms libraries. I helped them understand that immediate access to books, magazines, and graphic novels at a wide range of reading levels in a classroom library would enable students to choose books that interested them, books they could connect to and enjoy (Cunningham differentiating reading instruction: how to teach reading to meet the needs of each student, reflects and offers ways to deal with the fact that middle school classes include students reading at a diverse range of instructional levels. to learn more about robb’s books, classroom libraries, recommendations, teaching and parent tips, and more, visit laura robb. |
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