It Takes a Village

Building a community of readers takes an entire school.  It is important for students to see English teachers are not the only people in a school privy to enjoying a good book.  Today, a colleague and I swapped teaching assignments for the day.  It took a bit of finagling to make our schedules work, but we were able to make it happen.  Our goal was book talks!

Mr. Kramer is a sixth grade social studies teacher who is an avid reader.  He has a wonderful blog (Mr. Kramer's Book Blog).b Several of my seventh grade English students had him as a teacher last year, so they especially enjoyed having him come in to talk about books with them.  We worked it out so he could visit my English classroom for the last twenty-minutes of each class period to book talk, while I went to his classroom to teach a reading strategy to his sixth grade social studies students.  

As you watch the video clip, you’ll see my students jotting down the book title that Mr. Kramer is book talking on their Someday List.  A Someday List is simply a list of books students want to read in the future. Students keep these in their portfolios and know to update them any time we are doing teacher book talks and/or student book talks. These lists are a preventative measure to avoid hearing, “There are no books to read.”

If you are interested in more
information on promoting reading,
this book is wonderful.
It includes a printable
copy of the Someday List.

At lunch time, I was on my way down to the teacher’s lounge when I heard a student calling my name. I turned around to see one of my students from my fourth hour class holding up a book. He wanted me to know he had just checked out a book Mr. Kramer had recommended. Score! Seriously, these types of moments are what teachers live for, right?

Today, may have been a little stressful running between two classrooms, but I love the fact that "my" students became "our" students today. A big thank you to Mr. Kramer for being willing to share books with my classroom.  It was worth the extra effort!

Think about the people you could invite into your classroom to share their love of reading. I know you see Mr. Kramer with a slideshow presentation in the video clip, but you don't have to go that route. You can simply have your guest speaker hold up his/her favorite book and talk about it. And, perhaps English teachers we need to think about maybe going into a science class to promote science fiction and/or a history class to promote historical fiction. Let's work together to build a community of readers!