I know that I am constantly on here bragging on my students and I just cannot help it, they make me so proud. On a whim last week I ask them to tally up the number of books they had read since the first day of school (August 25th--for those of you that have a different first day) and the number came in at 273! I am so excited!! 273 books read. My first block group has read 151 books and my second block group has read 122 books, but what is more important than the number is the fact that they are talking about their books, they are talking about what they are reading, they are talking to each other about books, they are sharing books with one another. Shoot! They are even arguing over who is going to get which book next--they are calling dibs on books. The books that my students are reading are not just any old books either, they are books with meaning, books that have a connection to one event or another throughout history, which leads them to question things, which in turn leads to research, which leads to more discussion, which results in more reading. I have gone and bought more books for our classroom library twice since school started. The students contributed to this last shopping spree; I can not wait to show them what we bought. We raised $20.00 on our book drive and I spent $90.00, I think that is fair. It is really cool to watch them when I come to class with new books; it is like Christmas morning--I really wish that you guys could be there to see.
Another great thing that happened this past week, after the count. One young lady, who I have been working with on reading this year...whew! The year began like this:
"I do not like to read, I do not read. I write Hmong, I read Hmong, I speak Hmong. I hate to read."
This is what was staring me in this face on her reading interest survey while she was standing in front of me asking me to refer a book for her. With sweat on my brow and a nervous uneasy feeling in my stomach because I felt like I was staring down the barrel of a double barrel shot-gun I pulled out the only two books I had on the Hmong culture and handed them to her. I figured this would buy me some time until I could get to Barnes and Noble over the weekend and find something. She smiled and walked away. I sighed a big relief and that is where we started our journey together--her journey into books. The following Monday after a relentless search for books that might be connected to Hmong culture in some way (I came up empty) I bought a copy of Grace Lin's Where the Mountain Meets the Moon--I gave it to her first thing Monday morning--on Tuesday morning when she came to class with her nose stuck in the book she was on chapter 22. Last week when she tallied her number of books read she had read 12 books which she finished number 12 on Friday and started number 13, but more importantly than that the reading specialist stopped me to tell me that she had given her an assessment to check her scores, a repeat of the same assessment from a few weeks ago--she went from 70% accuracy to 100% accuracy. She loves
Another great thing that happened this past week, after the count. One young lady, who I have been working with on reading this year...whew! The year began like this:
"I do not like to read, I do not read. I write Hmong, I read Hmong, I speak Hmong. I hate to read."
This is what was staring me in this face on her reading interest survey while she was standing in front of me asking me to refer a book for her. With sweat on my brow and a nervous uneasy feeling in my stomach because I felt like I was staring down the barrel of a double barrel shot-gun I pulled out the only two books I had on the Hmong culture and handed them to her. I figured this would buy me some time until I could get to Barnes and Noble over the weekend and find something. She smiled and walked away. I sighed a big relief and that is where we started our journey together--her journey into books. The following Monday after a relentless search for books that might be connected to Hmong culture in some way (I came up empty) I bought a copy of Grace Lin's Where the Mountain Meets the Moon--I gave it to her first thing Monday morning--on Tuesday morning when she came to class with her nose stuck in the book she was on chapter 22. Last week when she tallied her number of books read she had read 12 books which she finished number 12 on Friday and started number 13, but more importantly than that the reading specialist stopped me to tell me that she had given her an assessment to check her scores, a repeat of the same assessment from a few weeks ago--she went from 70% accuracy to 100% accuracy. She loves