The Book Whisperer (10 page)

Bongani asks, “What books are we going to read in class this year? We read
Johnny Tremain
last year.”

I ignore the groans from the other students who must have been in Bongani's fifth-grade class and reply, “I don't know. What would you like to read? Are there books that we should share as a class together? What are some books that you would suggest? Let me know if you have books that you think we would enjoy, and we can discuss them. I have some books that I like to read aloud to my classes every year because everyone likes them, but I am open to your ideas, too.”

I believe that students should be empowered to make as many book choices as possible, including the books we read together. The idea of students clamoring to read favorite books feeds into my goal for getting them excited about reading. By valuing their opinions, even about the books we share as a class, I let them know that their preferences are as important as mine.

A few days later, I share with my students “The Rights of the Reader,” by French author Daniel Pennac. This list is available on the Web as a download-able poster with funky Quentin Blake illustrations at
http://www.walker.co.uk/bookshelf/the-rights-of-the-reader-poster.aspx
. As a reader, you will, no doubt, recognize these rights yourself.

I caution you not to hang this poster in your classroom; it will become wallpaper that students will cease to see after a few months. Even though I teach many of the same lessons to students year after year, I resist the urge to make posters out of these lessons and then reuse them, because I do not want students to think that their opinions are not original or that I can predict what they will say. Each class is different, and it is important for my students to see their ideas and their words—not someone else's—hanging on our walls as advice for all readers to follow. First, have the dialogue with your students about their own reading habits, and then provide Pennac's list of rights later as an endorsement of what they have already shared.

In addition to rereading favorites, stealing time to read, and abandoning books that are not working for them, readers look ahead to their next book. Reading the Newbery medalists each year has been part of my reading plan since I was a fourth grader. Now I devour lists and reviews from
Booklist
magazine and Amazon. When I realized that I had covered the back of every checkbook pad and receipt in my wallet with book titles and authors' names—constantly jotted down during chats with my reading friends—I started keeping a journal in my purse. Beginning a new journal each year, I scrawl down every recommendation I get and use these notes when I buy books or go to the library. This year's model is a three-by-five-inch, pocket-sized Moleskine notebook. The acid-free paper keeps my book lists from smudging and fading, and using the same brand of notebook that Hemingway supposedly used makes me feel literary.

An entire bookcase in my living room is filled with books I am planning to read—books I have borrowed, checked out from the library, or purchased. Laughingly referred to as “Miller Mountain,” this avalanche of books never gets smaller and guarantees that I will never run out of books to read. This overwhelming pile is often my excuse to students when I have not returned a book loan from them in a timely fashion, but it is also a reminder to them that I am always planning to read another book.

Unaccustomed to making their own reading choices at first, quite a few students, especially those who do not see themselves as readers, do not make plans for future reading. In school, their teacher tells them what books they will read and when. These students do not have much knowledge about the types of books available and few positive experiences with books that might inform their reading choices. They need a place to start. To provide scaffolding that will help them develop their own plans, I provide students with an approach for the reading they will do in my class.

That I require students to read forty books may seem shocking when you are a student who has not read more than a book or two a year, but this hefty requirement prevents students from negotiating with me about whether they will read much. Any teacher who expects students to read forty books is not going to accept a book or two! If I expected less, they would read less, or they would wait until later in the school year to start.

Ten books or twenty books are not enough to instill a love of reading in students. They must choose and read many books for themselves in order to catch the reading bug. By setting the requirement as high as I do, I ensure that students must have a book going constantly. Without the need to read a book every single day to stay on top of my requirement, students would read as little as they could. They might not internalize independent reading habits if my requirement expected less from them. I know this approach works because I have never had a student who reached the forty-book mark stop there. Students continue to read even after the requirement is met.

Some students are not confident that they will be able to reach this goal, but I assure them that they can. I am encouraging and supportive but firm, telling them, “Let's pick a book and get started. Lots of students, all kinds of readers, have done this. I know that you can do it, too.” I have seen students read an amazing number of books through the years, and I know that my reading requirement eventually becomes a non-issue for most of them. Brittany looks back on her accomplishments during the year: “When I learned that we had to read forty books this year, I flipped out. I had only read two books last year. I wanted to
faint
. As I made my way through the requirements, I slowly realized how much reading potential I had.”

When my students ask me what will happen to them if they do not read forty books, I am vague. Failure is not an option, so why talk about it? I think it is horrible that reading, for them, is an act worth doing only to pass a class. In reality, there is no negative consequence for falling short of this goal. After all, if a student reads twenty-two books in a school year (the fewest any of my students has ever read), who could take issue with that?

Over the years, my class reading requirement has morphed into an amalgam of suggested genres from my training-wheels book on reading workshops, Fountas and Pinnell's
Guiding Readers and Writers (Grades 3-6)
; the goals of Texas's sixth-grade language arts and social studies curriculum; and the types of books I noticed that my students like to read.

My students select from a range of materials, including poetry, fiction, and nonfiction. Poetry anthologies, nonfiction texts (including biographies and informational texts), and traditional literature selections (including mythology, folktales, and legends) are generally shorter books of less than a hundred pages. Fiction titles (fantasy, science fiction, historical fiction, and realistic fiction) are chapter-book length. I set a specific number of books that students must read in each genre, but I also allow them to choose nine from any genre to complete the forty-book total. The number of books set for each genre is not carved in stone; in fact, I change it from year to year. When my students asked me to create a mystery category, I did so. When my district curriculum set guidelines for a poetry unit, I added more books to my poetry requirements.

This reading requirement exposes students to a variety of books and genres so that they can explore books they might not ordinarily read and develop an understanding of the literary elements, text features, and text structures of most books. Furthermore, a wide range of genres enables me to design instruction around my district's mandates and state standards and still give my students the chance to select their own books in order to complete assignments that are already part of the curriculum. Students can use a wide range of books to access the broad concepts and themes they are expected to learn. As a language arts and social studies teacher, I prefer to integrate these subjects by layering reading and writing activities within Texas's sixth-grade world cultures curriculum.

 

For each region we investigate, I gather books on the history, people, and fiction indigenous to that part of the world. When we study the history and culture of Europe, students read folk and fairy tales from the Brothers Grimm, Charles Perrault, and Hans Christian Andersen. They try their hand at writing traditional literature by mirroring the motifs and themes of the classics we read. When we explore the culture of Japan, we read and write haiku poetry.

I have learned that students hunger for more information, beyond what their social studies textbook offers if we go the extra mile to provide it. To this end, I line the marker rail under our classroom white boards with regional text sets. This gives students an additional opportunity to read and research regional cultures and to become engrossed in regional literature. It also encourages students to explore and pursue their particular cultural interests. All of it ties back to our social studies discussions, furthering inquiry.

Requiring students to read a certain number of books has led to some unanticipated challenges. The first year I set such a reading goal, I noticed that my developing and dormant readers selected the shortest books they could find to get the job done. Expecting such a large number of books was an issue for a few of my underground readers, too. How would they ever read forty books when the books they loved the most were epic tomes with a staggering number of pages? I solved this problem by letting students count any book over 350 pages as two books toward the requirement. This prevents students from choosing books simply because they are short, acknowledges the preferences of students who like to read hefty volumes, and frees all of them to read whatever books they want—short or long.

Bongani recalls his reaction when he heard he had to read so many books: “When you said forty books my heart stopped and I blacked out for several seconds. Then it struck me. Forty Dr. Seuss books for forty days! When you told us about the genre requirements, I immediately said, ‘I am going to bomb this class.'”

During a conference with Paul, he admitted that he began the year by picking the shortest books he could find from each genre so that he would meet the class goals, but he wasn't doing that anymore. When I asked him what brought on this change, he told me that he had already read seventeen books by the end of the first nine weeks of school and he knew he would reach the forty mark by June. “I am going to read whatever I want, and just let it happen,” he told me. This tells me that Paul has gained reading confidence. Because he had never been given the freedom to choose his own books, extensive time to read them, or high expectations from a teacher, he did not believe he could do it. A few weeks in our class has changed Paul's view of himself as a reader and what he can accomplish.