After my literacy classes these last few quarters; working with K, 1st, and 6th grade readers; and reading tons of books and articles about literacy (notably Routman, Tovani, and Donalyn Miller's The Book Whisperer - the result is that I have literacy on my mind a lot. I recently discovered the website Goodreads, which allows you to create online libraries of books you have read, are reading, or want to read. I started keeping a list of the books I finished reading back in 2007, when I found myself living in China and had more time on my hands than I knew what to do with. I started reading for pleasure, something that had not happened during the five years I was in college. It was during this time that I rediscovered the pleasure of reading a good book. I think I started keeping the list in order to help remember the books I had read.
Fast forward 4 years, and here I am still keeping lists. But now, as I am about to embark on my career as a teacher, I want to pass on my love of reading to my students and to encourage them to become avid readers. In order to do this, I have started to incorporate the child and young adult literature into my personal reading lists. The idea was not original, I borrowed it from Miller, who created in-roads with her students by reading their recommendations. Then, students were more likely to take her recommendations.
As I look around my classroom (well, my student teaching classroom) I see a lot of the students reading the SAME book or series over and over again. I want to encourage them to read a NEW book, but find that most of my suggestions are books they have already read. I have also realized that in the 20 years that have passed since I graduated from 5th grade, many new books have been published. So, I find that I don't even know the names of current books and authors. How can I recommend books to my students if I am so out of touch with their literature?
When I am a teacher, I plan to employ Miller's strategy of requiring my students to read a lot of books (I think her requirement is 40), and I want to find a tool that will help the students keep track of these books and allow them to make recommendations to their classmates. I would love to use Goodreads, but I am a little leery of using it since it requires an email address to create an account. I want to protect the students' privacy and I was so hoping to find an EDU version of Goodreads. Any suggestions??
I also plan to have my students give book talks on a rotating basis (one student each day) for the entire school year. I am working to implement this into the classroom where I currently student teach. My goal is to create a strong literacy program in my future classroom and to encourage students to become life-long readers.
