Is Being a Reader Genetic?

One of the best parts of learning in community is the spontaneous discussions. Yesterday, we wondered if being a reader is something we inherit from our parents through genetics. Since I have some strong ideas, myself, about how we become readers, I recorded the discussion on video.

You can also join our discussion. Please share your thoughts in the comments.

Thinking About Reading from Andrea Hernandez on Vimeo.

My Life as a Reader Infographics

Reflection
Visual Communication
Thinking of oneself as a reader
New forms of writing
Presentation skills

These were some of the goals Karin Hallett and I had in mind when we decided to end the school year by having 4th graders create "My Life as a Reader" infographics. The process was simple and engaging, and the results were beautiful. Even my most vocally negative-about-reading student was talking happily about his earliest reading memories as he created his graphic.

We used Piktochart. It didn't work on our iPads, so we had to check out laptops which students enjoyed as a novelty since we have used iPads all year. I had them create accounts with school email so that they could save their work.

Although I feel like I already know my students really well as readers, I learned new things about each child and those books and experiences that define their reading lives.

Personalized Learning in a 1:1 Classroom: A Tour Through My Inbox

I know there is a lot of buzz about personalized learning these days. Lots of it comes at a cost where some service will assess your students and provide just-in-time learning. It is tempting to purchase one of those and feel comfortable that the curriculum is being covered at a pace that is right for each student. Although I do use many tools and apps,  that's really not what personalized learning looks like in my 1:1 language arts classroom.

So, what does it look like?

I don't think I can answer that question in a short post. However, I believe that a little tour through my email inbox may provide a glimpse. It hit me last night when I opened my school email.

Literacy= communication, and I do use email as one tool for communicating with my students. 

We read. We write. We edit.  We discuss. We think. We reflect. We create. Why would this look identical in a group of unique individuals?

What follows represents a sample from my current inbox. These are waiting for my reply, feedback or next steps. I have not chosen anything on purpose. I'm just sharing the process. This represents the ongoing learning conversation between my students and me. 

A 5th grader emails to tell me what salary he would like for the documentarian job. He also suggests two new jobs.

A 5th grader shares his updated narrative writing with me. Below is a short snippet of  an 8 page story

Another  5th grade narrative

a 4th grader shares a link to the book quiz he wrote on Goodreads

A 4th grader wrote an epilogue to Wonderstruck using Book Creator

5th grade character trading card

4th grade "visual vocab"

This conversation and creation, this journey, is why I love my 1:1 iPad classroom. 

A Teacher's Ode to Read-Alouds

One of my main goals this year as a language arts teacher is to build a community of readers, writers and thinkers. I am employing several different strategies in pursuit of this aim. One of the most exciting and pleasurable is class read-alouds. A few months back, I read Principal Joey's post "Stop Trying to Make Your Kids Read." It really struck a chord with me, and I left this comment (which I am only partially sharing here because it was SO LONG)

I completely agree with you about reading aloud. In fact, I devote a LOT of time to read aloud with both my 4th and 5th grade classes, and that time is probably having the biggest impact of anything I am doing in my quest to create a true community of readers.
Some of the reasons I think that read aloud is so powerful in my classroom are:
•I give the students choice. I keep an ongoing list of recommended middle grade books that I am interested in reading. I choose about 5 of those and have the students privately vote via Google form. This way, each student can choose the one they really want, and no one knows who voted for what. This creates a feeling of ownership and excitement before we even begin reading.
•I am an avid, lifelong reader. Not only do I read very fluently, but I know where, when and how to stop and teach. I do not pre-plan my read aloud “lessons.” However, I use read-aloud to teach almost everything, from literary devices to vocabulary to reading strategies. I am able to do this because of the confidence I possess from being a real reader.
•The more we read together, the more shared history we have as a reading community. We naturally make text-to-text connections, and no one is left out.

I ended that comment with:

I have much more to say on this subject…I think I will write a post about read aloud!

I have so much to say about this I don't know where to begin!!!!

As a Teaching/Learning Tool
In my experience, reading aloud is a vital tool for teaching everything and anything about reading. I recommend reading the classic Mosaic of Thought by Ellin Keene to understand how the act of making our thinking transparent during reading aloud helps children become better thinkers and readers. I also like the book Constructing Meaning by Nancy Boyles. These signs, which hang on the wall all year long, are from that book and we refer to them frequently during discussions.

We also have great opportunity to discuss vocabulary strategies, and often students will request to add an interesting new word to our growing word wall. 

My Non-Lesson Plan How-To

I do not write lesson plans for my read alouds. They evolve spontaneously. I attribute this to the fact that I do not "teach" reading so much as I share a genuine love of reading with my students. We choose, together as a class, books that no one (including me) has already read. I get recommendations from our fabulous school librarian, as well as some amazing members of my PLN who are avid readers and reviewers of books for this age group. 

The student librarians for each grade add the book to our read-alouds wall, and tag it "currently reading." After we finish the book, we go around the circle, and each student rates the book 1-5 stars, saying why they gave it the rating they did. The librarian keeps notes of each rating, figures out the class average and adds it to the wall. 

Most activities during or immediately after reading are focused around discussions and written responses. 

We have Skyped with other classes who are reading the same book, which has been a really fun experience. We have taken visual notes, written blog posts from the point of view of a particular character, written reviews on Goodreads, watched the movie and compared/contrasted book and movie, and in two weeks we will be Skyping with Holly Goldberg Sloan, the author of our latest read-aloud, Counting By 7's. 

We have discussed author's purpose, genre, metaphor, symbolism, word roots, and how authors sometimes "break the rules" of formal writing (which they are allowed to do because, presumably, they know the rules really well). 

We use these books as "mentor texts" for our own writing, which is getting better and better as we grow our understanding of and appreciation for the craft.  

What Do the Kids Say?

As much as I adore read-alouds, they do take time. And, like every teacher, I worry that there is never enough time to do everything. As a student-centered teacher, I value the input and opinions of my students, and I use surveys to gather this data. So I recently surveyed my classes to find out THEIR opinions of read-alouds.

Of my 30 students, I had one student say no and one say yes, after a short break. I also asked them to explain, in writing, their choice. Here are some of their responses:

I love read-alouds! I don't even want to think about stopping them, even for a short period of time. When you read aloud, you and other classmates help me understand things that I wouldn't understand if I read that book on my own. - Julia, 4th grade

I love the fact that I have been exposed to different genres that I wouldn't even think of checking. I think we should keep it going and read more. GO READALOUDS!!!!!!! - Jagger, 5th grade

I want to continue read alouds because when we finish a book, we want to read more books that are related to that book. I think it really helps people find the right books for them. -Nahila, 4th grade

I think we should keep doing read-alouds because it's a chance for everyone to settle down and get comfortable. For me, it helps write in different types of ways. -Arin, 5th grade

I would like to continue because they are fun to listen to and the story is always good. -Evan, 5th grade

Communities Share Stories
If you are still reading....you may be as passionate as I am about this topic. So you may enjoy this story that illustrates how reading aloud connects us as a community in special ways. I just finished reading Wonderstruck by Brian Selznick with 4th grade.  This incredible story is told partly through illustrations and partly through words. Towards the end of the book, the characters in the two stories meet up and the words and illustrations combine to tell the rest of the story.

When we got to this picture, I stopped reading for the day.

I challenged my students to use their iPads and what they knew to see if they could find out where the characters were. Several of them were excited that they were able to figure out that the characters were at the Queens Museum.

A few days later, I flew to New York for a conference. As the plane was landing at LaGuardia, I looked out the window to see that we were directly over this sight! My seatmate must have thought I was crazy as I scrambled to find my phone so I could take this photo for my students.

Further Reading

Why Reading Aloud to Older Children is Valuable

How a Reading Promise Can Forge Families and Shape Lives

Read Aloud: Why 15 Minutes a Day Matters

Matt Renwick's Top 10 Takeaways From the Read Aloud Handbook

The Warmth of a Shared Experience 

Upgrading the Reading Log

I love Shelfari, a social networking site for readers. I am an avid reader, but not a big collector of physical books. I don't have an ereader; I do read books. However, I get a lot of my reads from the public library or borrowed from friends. If I do buy a book and love it, the first thing I usually do is pass it on to someone else I think will enjoy it. Therefore, my bookshelves do not represent my life as a reader. Enter Shelfari. Now, I can have the pleasure of a beautiful bookshelf to display my books. It helps me remember what I have read and when, what I liked, what I loved.... If anyone else is interested in my reading, they can "friend" me and peruse my shelves. I have recently started including on my shelfari shelves the books I read aloud to my children, as well. I'm happy to have a way to remember those precious moments spent each night at bedtime, even after the physical books have made their way back to the library or shared with others.

I am a big believer in using authentic tools and processes to develop habits of literacy with students. One of my least favorite of all "schooly" inventions is the reading log. Real readers catalog and share their reading in a variety of ways, but I have yet to meet the adult reader who keeps a reading log showing how many pages read of a particular book at each reading session. I've even seen reading logs that require children to count how many words they've read and how many minutes they've engaged in reading. What real reader counts pages or minutes? It is ironic that an activity designed to help ignite a love of reading can be exactly what sucks the very life from it. Teachers looking for accountability have devised this tool with best intentions in mind, I am sure. However, as a parent I can tell you that the reading log, besides being inauthentic, is also difficult to maintain and provides no motivation or impetus for engagement. I know I could be fairly accused of being opinionated, however, it's not just me who has thoughts about reading logs. This post from a mom, titled "I Hate Reading Logs" garnered 692 comments!

Upgrading the Reading Log-

As an adult who loves to read, I also love Shelfari. This is the litmus test I use. If I find something motivating and engaging, if it is a genuine part of who I am as a reader, than I believe it is potentially useful for students who are developing their reading-selves and teachers who are helping them to do this. There are many possibilities for using Shelfari with students as a way to monitor what your students are reading outside of class. As an added bonus, Shelfari promotes the social aspects of reading, gives students a place to share with and learn from others, and helps students begin to understand that what they read is part of their identity.

How-to:

In order to create a shelfari account, students must have an email address.
Shelfari How To

Once your students have created their accounts, they can create and upload avatars, add friends and start exploring the site. In order to add friends, students should use the "advanced search" and type in the friend's email address. This is easy to do if you use school email addresses with a predictable format. Teachers can also experiment with creating groups and having students add certain books to the group shelf. Students and/or classes who blog have the very cool option to create a widget to post their Shelfari shelf on their blog. Creative teachers will find that there are many ways to adapt the tool for your students. Try things out, explore and have fun. Please share in the comments if you have good strategies, things to watch out for or any other thoughts about using Shelfari with students.

Books Around the World Meme

Silvia Tolisano is always one to challenge me in the best of ways! She devised a meme challenging readers to look at the books we are reading, see if we tend to favor certain locales and then expand our horizons. Since reading is a type of travel, it is the next best thing to being able to visit or live in different worlds. I have always been an avid reader, although I have a bit of a problem remembering details of the books I've read.

Here are the details of the meme. You can join by being tagged or you can tag yourself.

• Create a Google Map and add a bookmark with the title and author of a book you have read with a setting in another country of the world.
• Look through Book Around the World recommendations or on other Google Maps created by participants in this meme/challenge.
• Pick at least three books for your summer reading list that have a setting in a country you have not read another book about.
• Enjoy expanding your horizon!

Step 1: Create a google map. I decided to put a few recent reads on my google map. I noticed that my book settings seemed to favor North America and Asia lately. I tried to take a minute and think of books I have read from each continent. I can not think of a book I have read from Antarctica. The closest I could think of was Mr. Popper's Penguins. Other than that, I have "visited" the other six continents through reading. Countries, however, are a different story. Luckily, I already had a few books on my "plan to read" shelf that also fit the challenge.

View Larger Map
Here are my three books:
1. People of the Book by Geraldine Brooks, Bosnia and Herzogovnia
2. Shadow of the Wind by Carols Ruiz Zafon, Spain
3. The Book Thief by Markus Zusak, Germany

Now I know I am favoring Europe here...what can I say? These are three books I have really wanted to read anyway (have Shadow of the Wind sitting on my night table) and all happen to be listed on the Book Around the World site.

Thanks, Silvia, for always keeping me on my toes! I am tagging: Kim Glasgal, Ken Allan (Ken, something tells me you are a reader-hope you are up for a new challenge since the comment challenge is almost over) and.....who else out there would like to participate?