Blogpost 4 Lisa L. Smith (CDC) for November 2015

Blogpost 4 Lisa L. Smith (CDC) for November 2015

Reading Essentials by Reggie Routman; “Share Your Reading Life.”

This chapter was very thought provoking to me.  Because I teach 4 year old children, I guess I haven’t thought much about sharing my reading life with them.  I know that one of the teachers that most impacted my literacy identity did exactly that.  She shared with us her love of reading and her passion for books.  She made books come alive for us and told us all the time that she often got lost in a book and couldn’t put it down.  She was by far the most influential teacher I ever had.  I think now that it was because she did share her literacy identity with the class.  We knew she liked informational books about cats.  We knew that she enjoyed reading mysteries and love stories.  We also knew that she read the newspaper every single day because it was “important to know what was going on in the world around us.”  She often shared appropriate and pertinent news with us and helped us to see how it affected our lives.  After reading this chapter, I will make a more concerted effort to share who I am as a reader with my students, even if they are young.  The most important thing I want them to know is that I love books and that I read a lot.  I will bring in books that I have been reading to share with them.  I will do a better job of helping them see that reading is not just for learning, but for enjoyment.  I thought it was very interesting that a principal indicated that reading was not enjoyed at his school because there were in essence too many strings attached.  They had to summarize, write book reports, answer questions, take tests, and get their parents to sign their reading log.  This is definitely something that we as teachers do in order to have documentation of reading.  However, it sucks the life and joy right out of the book.  I probably would not curl up with a good book at my house if I knew that I would have to do tons of work to go along with it.  The author kept a reading record.  I personally don’t know if I feel it necessary to record everything I read because that becomes drudgery.  But I do think recording a favorite book, or a meaningful quote or message from a book could be rewarding.  The burning question is, “How does that look for a 4K classroom?”  I guess what I take away is the effort to communicate with my students my love of reading and passion for books.  I want them to know that it is a big part of who I am.  I want them to know that I like cats and enjoy reading mysteries and historical fiction.  I want them to know that my husband has read 35 books about the same subject because he wants to know as much as he can about the subject.  I want them to know I read to be a better teacher.  That is definitely an ongoing conversation I will be having with my students.  I want to do a better job of helping them get more out of the books they read and the read alouds we do.  I already attempt to make the books come to life, but I think I may have us write a little as a class about what was meaningful about certain books that we really enjoyed.  These are the things I took out of the chapter.  I hope that by adding a few of these changes in my classroom, my students will come to know me as a reader and hopefully I can impact them as much as my long ago teacher impacted me when she sat in her creaky rocker and told us about her love of reading and read to us.  We thought we were too old for that in some ways, but every single one of us was on the edge of our seat when she picked up a book.