Reading Identity – Page 13

Be the change, being a teacher, books, Literacy, Reading, Reading Identity

On Becoming a Reader

June 14, 2018June 14, 2018 Pernille Ripp

My husband is not a reader.

By far, he is one of the smartest people I know. He can fix anything broken, he can solve any problem. He can dream and plan and build pretty much anything. But reading, in the traditional sense of books, nah… not for him.

When I first met him, I couldn’t figure out how someone as smart as him could not see value in books. How could you live a full life without books? And yet, in the 17 years, we have been together, he has shown me how many facets there are to a full life. But now he has been in school for the past two years, getting his degree as a Tech Ed teacher, and the other day after taking a particularly grueling test, he told me how much he felt like he wasn’t smart enough for the test simply because of his reading pace. You see, the test was timed, and so when the time was almost up, my husband did what many of our students do all of the time; filled in as many unanswered questions with random guesses as he could. Better answered then left blank.

He told me how he knew he could have answered them right had he had the time. He told me how he felt this pressure at all times knowing that he wasn’t going fast enough. He told me that he tried to skim as quickly as he could but then lost meaning and had to read it all over again.

If he had only been a faster reader, he would have been just fine.

It blows my mind still that we equate reading pace with reading comprehension. That we allow standardized tests to teach our children that if they cannot read quickly, they cannot read at all. Which jobs require us to read complicated materials within 90 seconds? But that’s the reality we face and so at the end of our discussion, I gave him my best advice; read more books. It is the one guaranteed way to increase your reading speed. Find books you love. Take the time to read. And you will see, your reading pace will increase.

He told me how he just didn’t like books. How he didn’t mind reading technical stuff (which he devours daily), but that books just had never caught his attention. That they were too slow, too boring, too confusing. That reading was never anything fun or entertaining but always presented as an assignment; read this book, do this work. Rinse, repeat. He sounded exactly like my most resistant readers. The ones we all teach that tell us loudly and proudly that reading is not their thing and we will certainly not convince them otherwise.

And so I did what I do every single day of the year. I handed him a book, Orbiting Jupiter, and told him to try it. To give it a shot and if he didn’t like it, tell me and I would try again.

He sat down and read into the night then woke up and finished the book. He finished the book! And then he asked me for another. I handed him How it Went Down. He started to read.

Today we went to my classroom to grab stuff. He went to the bookshelves and started to browse. Grabbed a few books, asked me about others. Together we book-shopped. He was open to whatever but had a few ideas, maybe some war history? Maybe something with a fast pace? Social justice lens?

Brandon’s To Be Read Pile – his first one ever…

I quickly grabbed my tried and true, added them to his pile and realized right in that moment that I was working with him like I would any resistant reader: offer choice, support, time to read, and most importantly communication. At 41 years old, it seems that my husband is finally going properly through the motions of what it means to know yourself as a reader. And I couldn’t be prouder.

So often we focus on these aspects of developing reader identify when students are young. Before they reach middle and high school. Once they come to us older, perhaps more jaded, more stubborn, we sometimes forget to go back to the basics. To treat them as we would any developing reader. To go back to choice, community, access to meaningful books and discovery of who they are as readers. To find the time to actually help them become the reader they can be. Too often the content gets in the way. All of the little things that constitute what teaching sometimes becomes, rather than what it should be. We assume that someone certainly will figure out how to help this child become a reader without realizing that that someone is us. That we are the person who needs to somehow reshape the reading experience that they have had until now so that they do not become adults who do not read.

Today, I was reminded of how it is never too late. How every child that we teach has the potential to see themselves as a reader by the time our year is up. That even the adults that tell us that they are not readers can still become readers. But that they need our help, not our judgment, our know-it-betterness, our confusion of how they could live without books. Instead, they need what every reader needs; choice, books, community, time, personalization, and understanding.

My husband is not a reader, but that doesn’t mean he cannot become one, now.

If you like what you read here, consider reading my newest book, Passionate Readers – The Art of Reaching and Engaging Every Child Also consider joining our book club study of it, kicking off June 17th. This book focuses on the five keys we can implement into any reading community to strengthen student reading experiences, even within the 45 minute English block. If you are looking for solutions and ideas for how to re-engage all of your students consider reading my very first book Passionate Learners – How to Engage and Empower Your Students. Also, if you are wondering where I will be in the coming year or would like to have me speak, please see this page.

being a teacher, Literacy, Reading, Reading Identity

Make Room For Both Types of Independent Reading

June 12, 2018July 20, 2020 Pernille Ripp

90 minutes. This glorious amount of time awaits my students and me next year for our English classes. No more trying to cram everything into 45 minutes, no more rushing, no more skipping things. 90 whole minutes, and I cannot help but think of all we can become.

As I plan for these minutes, I realize that once again one of our central tenets will be the right to choose a book and to read it freely every single day. With no post-its, no jots, no interruptions. Just reading for the love of reading, every day, every child, no exceptions. Because if we listen to Louise Rosenblatt, and I don’t know why we shouldn’t, she reminded us back in 1978 that children need to be taught that there are two types of reading. Aesthetic reading which focuses on the love of reading, on living within texts so that we can create a relationship with the text. On being with the text so that we can see ourselves as readers. And also efferent reading, reading for skill, reading to work on reading. The things we do with what we read.

For many years, it appears that we have focused mostly on the later. The joy of reading has simply not been something we have made room for in our schools as we rush to utilize every single minute for instruction, for skill, for doing something. And we see the direct results now. The PEW Research Center reports that 24% of adults have not read a book in the last 12 months. Scholastic reminds us that fewer and fewer children read a book for fun every day. And we see it in our classrooms as students roll their eyes and tell us that books serve no purpose in their lives. We see it when teachers tell us that they simply don’t have time for students to read in class because they have too much to cover.

We have lost our way when it comes to one of the basic premises of what teaching reading is really all about; reading for the love of it. Reading to become a reader who reads without the threat of a grade or the promise of a reward.

We must do better than that.

And so next year, I will start once again with 20 minutes of uninterrupted reading time. 20 minutes where we simply work on loving reading. Where we work on falling into the pages of a book and then staying there. Nothing to do but read. Then a mini-lesson and then we shift focus to the skills of reading. There will be discussion, strategic lessons, small groups, and everything we love about the workshop model. Students will know that they are now working on a different skill than before because it is within this knowledge they can see the difference. They need to know there is a difference.

For too long we have lost too many kids in reading. They have turned away from books because books meant more work. More things to do. More interruptions. More accountability. And while we need students who can apply the skills of reading, we more so need kids who will like reading once they leave us. Who will not become a part of the 24% as we slide toward a more alliterate nation, a more alliterate world. And it starts with the very decisions that we make every single day. Where we look at the precious time we are given and get our priorities straight. It was never about just making sure kids could pass tests, it was always about them becoming more than what they started as. So we have to make room for both types of independent reading. The one where kids “just” read and the one where they work while they read. Otherwise, we will lose them.

It starts with the decisions we are making now as we reflect on the year ahead. Make room for both because we cannot do the work if we don’t. And if you don’t have the time, make the time. Ask yourself what are you doing with the time? how much time is lost simply in transitions? In bell work? In us teachers talking too much? If we say we want students to become readers then that starts in our classrooms, not when they go home.

being a teacher, books, Reading, Reading Identity

How We Gave Every Student a Book on the Last Day of School

June 6, 2018June 6, 2018 Pernille Ripp

If you follow me on social media, you may have seen this post…I know many have and many had questions. So this is my attempt to answer those questions.

A while back, I realized that if I started collecting books, perhaps, just perhaps, I could give every single one of my literature studies students a book to keep on the last day of school. But that would require 76 individual books. As I pondered the idea, I realized the injustice. Summer slide can happen to any child. Every child we teach on our 7th-grade team could use a book, even if they already live in a book flood. What if we were able to gather up 150 books, one for each student, for the last day of school? Would my team be up for it?

I shouldn’t even have wondered, of course, they were because one of the things I love about working at Oregon Middle School is the dedication of all to joyful literacy experiences. Is the dedication of all staff to help students become or remain readers who like reading. And so we realized that we now needed 150 books. And not old, worn out copies. Not books that no one would want to read, but instead books that would entice. Books that would actually be a possibility for a child to want to read, without a nagging teacher around, with the competition of everything summer holds.

So we started to collect books. I am in the lucky position that some publishers send me books and so I knew I could use a few books from there. But, it wouldn’t be enough. We needed books that would work, not just any old book. My next stop was Scholastic. We knew I would be able to use my bonus points to get more books for the kids. I also spent my own money to add it up to receive bonus books and get more points. Slowly the collection started to grow. Finally, I asked our team for money. Could we take money out of our team fund for this endeavor? Once again, they were onboard and excited for the idea.

And so we went to Books4School – a warehouse here in Madison, whose owner’s sole mission is to get high-quality books in the hands of children for cheap. He buys up overstock from publishers and then sells them to the public and online for less than $2. Yup, less than $2. Because he is not in it to make a huge profit but instead to ensure that more children have books in their hands. So armed with our team funds, I bookshopped. Filled an entire cart with titles like Speak, Noggin’, Day of Tears, Sunrise over Fallujah, Backlash, and See You at Harry’s. Filled it with books that I knew represented a diverse wide of readers. Books we had loved this year. Books we had loved in the past.

As the pile grew in our classroom, the students were curious. Why may we not bookshop those? What are those for? We held our tongues until the very last day when we gathered them all around for our final team meeting.

Surrounded by books each equipped with a hand-drawn bookmark from Kevin Sylvester, who writes one of our very favorite book series Minrs, we told the students just how thankful we were for them. Just how proud we were. How we would miss them. How we wanted to thank them and we knew just the way.

We then told them to look around because in a moment they were going to have a chance to select whichever book they wanted to keep. To stand up and browse all of the tables and then o please find a great book and read it this summer. That is was the very least we could do.

And then something surprising happened. The students cheered. These sometimes too cool to read kids actually cheered. And there was a mad rush to grab the book they had noticed. There was a mad rush to find just the book they wanted to read. Kids walking around with each other sharing ideas. Pointing out favorites. One child telling me that she grabbed a book she had already read because she knew it was so good she had to read it again. Another child telling me that he had wanted to read this book all year but never had the chance. Almost every single child leaving with a book in their hands.

At the end of the day, I wondered if the students actually cared about the books or whether it was just one more thing we had tried that didn’t really make an impact, yet as I looked around our team area, I only found three books left behind. Three books out of 150. Three books that someone had forgotten. These kids that sometimes could not remeber to bring a pencil a class actually brought their books home.

This morning, I received an email from a parent thanking us for the year. She wrote about the change she had sene in her child this year. How “…he even told me yesterday that before the kids were allowed to pick out their free book, that he purposely sat close to the book he wanted to make sure to get, so he could read it this summer.” This from a child who was not sure that reading was something he cared about before this year.

The mission for us at Oregon Middle School is to create opportunities for kids to love reading, or at the very least like it. Handing them all a book on the last day of school was the very best thing we could have done. It showed our commitment to their future lives as readers. And who knows, perhaps that book will be THE book for that child one day? May every child be given a book on the last day of school.

Awards, being a teacher, Reading, Reading Identity

On Reading Rewards

May 22, 2018May 23, 2018 Pernille Ripp

He finally found a book he liked.

She actually has a book she wants to read over summer.

He read more books than he ever has before.

She tried a new genre and liked it.

He finally actually read a book rather than just pretend.

These major accomplishments are some that my students shared today as we gathered around to do our end of year reading celebration.

Some of my students read more than fifty books this year, some only read a few. And yet, within that number lies the story of a child who tried, who didn’t give up, who kept investing themselves as a reader, no matter what their relationship was before they came to 7th grade. I am so proud of how they have grown.

And yet, when I look around on social media I keep seeing posts about how teachers are throwing special celebrations only for the kids that met their 40 book challenge goal. That met their AR level. That reached the growth target set for them. And I cannot help but get sad, and perhaps, a little angry, because are we truly thinking about what these types of celebrations do to the kids that once again are excluded? That once again did not get invited? That once again did not get any recognition no matter how hard they worked?

Once again it appears our well-meaning intentions have gotten the better of us. That we get so focused on the goal, on the quantity, that we forget about the growth. The incredible mountains that some of our students have overcome to simply find a book, read a book, love a book.

When we reward only those who have met the goal we have set, we tell the rest that while they tried, it was not enough. That while they may have finally read a book, they are still not enough of a reader for us to recognize. That our experience together was never about their growth but was about this arbitrary number that they needed to reach, this goal they did not set. That while they may have felt like they accomplished something, they really didn’t.

Which teacher really wants students to think that?

What if we instead celebrated all of our kids? What if we instead asked every single child to reflect on how they have grown as a reader? What if we instead asked every single child to give themselves an award based on their own perceived accomplishment?

You might get something like this if you did…

Students who contemplated over their own reading experiences and then wrote their own award. (To see the template for the certificate go here).

Kids who know they have grown as a reader and who see the worth in what they have done. Kids who see that the teachers recognize this year’s worth of work and dedication and are so proud of them. Because we are. Kids who are proud of themselves, because they should be.

So I implore you, do not make your end of year reading celebrations about the number. Instead, ask the students what they are proud of. What they have achieved and celebrate them all. Let them have the time to see how far they have come so that they can leave our schools with a sense of accomplishment that they might not otherwise have had.

PS: Next year, start the year by having students set their own goals, as explained here, so that they too can work on something meaningful.

If you like what you read here, consider reading my newest book, Passionate Readers – The Art of Reaching and Engaging Every Child. This book focuses on the five keys we can implement into any reading community to strengthen student reading experiences, even within the 45 minute English block. If you are looking for solutions and ideas for how to re-engage all of your students consider reading my very first book Passionate Learners – How to Engage and Empower Your Students. Also, if you are wondering where I will be in the coming year or would like to have me speak, please see this page.

being a student, being a teacher, books, end of year, Reading, Reading Identity, Student

Best Book of the Year Speech in Just 15 Words

May 22, 2018 Pernille Ripp

Every year our very last speech is a “Best Book of the Year” Speech. Every year, my students declare their love for books in front of the class. They share their favorite reads in order for everyone else to add them to their to-be-read list. I scribble down each title so I can create a blog post for the rest of the world. It is always fascinating to see the books that make the cut.

This year, we have worked on brevity. On the importance of words. On getting to the point, so we added a twist to this yearly event; you get 15 words exactly. No more, no less. 15 words to make others write down the title you loved. 15 words to somehow give enough of a glimpse into the book to tempt others.

To inspire my students I read them a Cozy Classic – a 12-word re-telling of some very well-known classics. Then I have them two days to create their speech, work on their gestures, and prepare for their performance. The results yesterday were pretty stellar. Engaged students and lots of titles added. Lots of laughs while sharing the love of books we have read. One more step toward creating reading experiences long after they leave us. Long after the last day of school.

Be the change, being a student, being a teacher, Reading, Reading Identity

Who I Am as a Reader – A Reading Memoir Writing Project

May 14, 2018 Pernille Ripp

White, Yellow, Red, Free Image

Every year, we have tried to create a meaningful end to the year. A meaningful way for all of us to come together one last time, to cement the year we have had. To realize just how far we have come. In the past few years, it was our This I Believe speeches, given on the last few days where students sometimes decided to delve into their past as they looked at their future.

This year, I wanted something different and an idea I have heard both Donalyn Miller and Teri Lesene mention came to mind; the reader memoir. A seemingly simple narrative that would allow us to see the growth of our students as writers while they reflected upon their reading. A way for us to hear the truth that they carry within them, to see the hopes or fears they have for their future reading life.

So three weeks ago, as we started our final reading challenge (a self-selected book club or an independent reading challenge), I unveiled the project, to see the slides, go here. Write about your life as a reader. The good, the bad, the future, the past. Tell me about who you are now, how you have grown, the books you have cherished and those you didn’t. About what made you a reader or turned you away from reading.

At first, some kids were skeptical, after all, why would they want to write about that, and yet as the memoirs themselves start to roll in, I cannot help but sit in awe as my students dive into their own reading experiences to share who they are as readers now.

“If we lived in a world without books, I’d make my own…”

“When we’re asked to read in class, I actually read.”

“I don’t think I was meant to be a reader.”

“My parents would sit with me and my siblings, reading us stories, and we would huddle close and listen. Then I would begin to slump, falling asleep to the flowing words.”

As my students’ words surround me, I cannot help but be grateful for the words they have chosen to share, the truths they have given me as I prepare for another set of readers and nonreaders next year. What a way to end, by knowing them even more. What a way for them to end, by knowing themselves a little more. Perhaps, this will be something they also remember.