Enjoying Reading

In Routman's first three chapters of Reading Essentials, she emphasizes how important it is to convey to your students the enjoyment of reading. She encourages teachers to simplify their teaching life, to bond with the students, and to share how important reading is in a teacher's life. One of the things that Routman discussed that stuck with me was for a teacher to lead by example and demonstrate how important reading is in their life. Hopefully by showing students how important it is, they will begin to feel the same way. I really liked how Routman brought a picture of her library to class to show how many books she has and is a great visual example of how reading is important to her. I really connected with this idea because I love having books, especially books that I have loved reading. I live with roommates and had always wanted a bookshelf to display my many books, of course bookshelves are expensive so I had always put off having one until this year when I moved in with a girl who had a huge bookshelf. I was so excited to display all my books and try to share and sell her on reading a few of them. I like the idea of bring in a picture of your library for students to see, it shows how proud you are of your collection and lets the students feel as though you have shared some intimate details of your life with them.

Another thing that Routman discusses in Chapter 3 is encouraging students to have a Book club or to recommend books for one another to read. I love this idea! It is always nice to talk to someone who has a read a book before you to see if it was good, bad, and worth reading. Now of course I would stress to my students how important it is to formulate their own ideas on the book but I think that it's a great idea and also lets you as a teacher see that students reading comprehension by having them "sell" the book to their peers. Instead of doing a book report I would love to just have students give a "blurb" on the book they read to the class. I think that would be more fun for them to do than a boring old book report and would still show if they students learned anything and it would also encourage reading since students would get excited and interested to read the books their peers liked.

In my main placement my teacher does "book club" with her students. She sells the books to her students and then has them choose their top three choices for the books they want to read. She then places them with the book that is at their reading level, since each of the different books are a different levels so that everyone can have a chance to read and understand the stories without being too challenged. She has the students break into small groups and the kids lead discussions. I think that this is a great idea and one that I would love to do in my classroom, it makes reading fun for students and nothing is more fun than discussing ideas on a book with peers or friends.