The Importance of Reading

I have always loved reading. I can't remember a time that I did not love books. As a child I loved The Babysitter's Club and Illistrated Classics. I remember reading books that impacted who I was and how I viewed the world. In elementary school we read such great books as The Giver, Are You There God, It's Me Margaret, Number of Stars, Roll of Thunder Hear My Cry, Bridge to Terabithia, and From the Mixed Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler. As a Language Arts teacher today I know how important reading is. There are debates and arguments on what is right and how we should be having kids read. I do not feel that there is one right way. I still read class novels. But the novels you select need to be important and have a reason. For example one of the books we teach every year is The Outsiders. I have seen how well 12 and 13 year olds connect to this novel. It speaks to them and that gets them more interested in reading. You will not reach every child with one book. Even though in my expereince The Outsiders comes really close. But just seeing their peers excited and to feel the energy reaches the kids the book might miss. Do we need more diverse books in our school. Aboslutely. I am always looking for books to put in my school library or stories to teach that have more diverse characters. When I first started teaching I read Donalyn Miller's Book The Book Whisperer and it was life changing. My goal in life is to get books into the hands of kids. As my classroom library shows I am very dedicated. I have books lining each wall, on tables, on the white board. Kids see new stacks not yet processed and they want to see what i have bought for them. I have more kids read beacuse I have given them access to books. Access is one of the things kids don't always have. At this time of year in a lot of schools kids don't have access to their media centers because of testing. So they are cut off from books in a way some teachers may not consider. It's why having books for my students is so important. Now part of that is I am a book buyer. I buy books from Book Outlet, libraries, and usded book stories to save money. I want to give the love I had as a child to other children. I want them to have the access and diversity in thier books. I want them to see themselves in what they read.

This year I have challenged my students to  do the 40 Book Challenge. Now I got this idea from Donalyn Miller's book The Book Whisperer. I highly recommend this book to any teacher that is trying to get their students to read and get excited about reading. This is my first year trying it so I already have things I want to change for next year, but overall I think it is going well. I have read quite a few books so far that I want to discuss.

The first book i read was Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson. I thought this book was amazing. I liked how ti was set up and how the story was told. The way the story built was steady and effectively done. I would highly recommend this book for middle school students. The book does deal with some very delicate and important issues and i would advise you to read the book before suggesting it to people, but it brings up some good points and important discussion points.

Lawn Boy by Gary Paulson was another good read. it is a very quick read and would be a good book to help struggling readers in middle school get started. It is a very cute book and did not take long to read at all.

I was surprised at how much I liked Among the Hidden by Margaret Peterson Haddix. I thought it was an interesting book about a futuristic world. It is usually not my type of book but it was pretty entertaining.