This week I finally got around to emailing a parent that's been on my list to contact for a while. He isn't one of my focal students, but he easily could be. He's an alright student, but he doesn't read. He often lies on his reading log, which I've approached him on at least once. So finally I emailed his dad, just stating that his son isn't reading, and it'd be great if he could help me out and get him to read every night. I also noted that some parents have been successful with taking their child to the bookstore to pick out a book.
Today, I walked into the room where this child was sitting, after getting done with his STAR test for the day, and he's reading a new book! I could tell that they had gone out and bought the book this weekend, just by it being a new book and his bookmark was the receipt from it. Yea! Also, the book he picked was a memoir of someone who had been on drugs and kind of straightened out his/her life--at least what I could tell from looking at the cover. And actually, until this moment, I didn't think about how this is the third kid who has read a memoir about someone getting their life together. And all three of those kids come from that background in some way or another. This kid was actually adopted out of foster care at age 8, and has been lucky to have a wonderful family that is super supportive now. But really, this book probably is helping him to make sense of his history- his mom was a drug addict, etc.
Thus, and maybe this is obvious, but these kids are showing me that they want books that represent themselves. As opposed to my privileged white kids who will eat up the Ellen Hopkins realistic fiction about troubled life, all of these kids have wanted to read the non-fiction version. I think a finding is that I need to increase my library of non-fiction, specifically memoirs.
One other quick finding, I put up a bunch of new books on my board ledge and it's amazing how many kids have come up to leaf through them. I think my goal for next year will be to find some better ways to display books and rotate them often. Ruth's got a bin of recommended books from students, which might be an easy way to go about it.
Today, I walked into the room where this child was sitting, after getting done with his STAR test for the day, and he's reading a new book! I could tell that they had gone out and bought the book this weekend, just by it being a new book and his bookmark was the receipt from it. Yea! Also, the book he picked was a memoir of someone who had been on drugs and kind of straightened out his/her life--at least what I could tell from looking at the cover. And actually, until this moment, I didn't think about how this is the third kid who has read a memoir about someone getting their life together. And all three of those kids come from that background in some way or another. This kid was actually adopted out of foster care at age 8, and has been lucky to have a wonderful family that is super supportive now. But really, this book probably is helping him to make sense of his history- his mom was a drug addict, etc.
Thus, and maybe this is obvious, but these kids are showing me that they want books that represent themselves. As opposed to my privileged white kids who will eat up the Ellen Hopkins realistic fiction about troubled life, all of these kids have wanted to read the non-fiction version. I think a finding is that I need to increase my library of non-fiction, specifically memoirs.
One other quick finding, I put up a bunch of new books on my board ledge and it's amazing how many kids have come up to leaf through them. I think my goal for next year will be to find some better ways to display books and rotate them often. Ruth's got a bin of recommended books from students, which might be an easy way to go about it.
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