Becoming a Book Whisperer

In early August, I had the very good fortune of taking a class with Donalyn Miller, the author of The Book Whisperer. Donalyn (I’m going to presume we would be on a first name basis with each other) has a new book coming out, called Reading in the Wild, and her class was geared towards helping teachers create an environment where all children are readers and where readers can flourish. I know I may not be able to implement every idea I heard about that day, but here are some things I’ve either tried or will try in starting out my new school year.

Just like teachers of writing should be writers themselves (hence my blog), teachers of reading need to be readers. This has luckily never been a problem for me, but once the year gets going, it’s harder to read as much or as often as I would like. My solution to this has been audio books.  I run in the mornings before school, and I wear a fanny pack with a portable CD player strapped to my waist. I know it isn’t pretty, but I “read” most of my children’s books this way.  At school, I have a “What is Mrs. Quist Reading” poster on the wall near my classroom door, and I print off a picture of the book cover as well as a short summary of the story. When there get to be too many of these papers on the wall, I three-hole punch them and put them in a binder for kids to look through when they need new book suggestions. Always having a book going allows me to tell kids about my own reading life so that they know I’m walking the walk with them.

This year I’m going to have the kids do the same thing. I’m going to laminate tags for their lockers that have space to record their current books. Hopefully other kids will read them as they pass by in the hallway, and get ideas for books to read from their peers.

Early in the year –either at open house or during the first days or weeks – I’ll have the kids wear name tags that say “Hello – I like to read about __________.” As they interact during the day, they’ll have a chance to make connections with other readers who share their same interests. At the very least, I’ll get some ideas for book suggestions for each student.

I’m also going to try a reading graffiti wall. This is a blank piece of paper where kids can write down their favorite lines from books.  I will have them show me what they’re going to write down first, as I can see this getting out of hand, but I really like the idea of building awareness of good writing by having students recognize it themselves. I plan to call my wall “Notable Quotables” because I’m a little worried that calling it “Reading Graffiti” might just inspire writing NOT connected to reading.

These are just a few ideas that I’m going to try on my way to becoming more of a book whisperer this year. I’ll post some more things that I try as the year gets underway. I’d love to hear what you’re doing to inspire more kids to love reading!