Reading in the Classroom

As a teacher, I can say it didn't take me long to figure out that kids who struggle with reading, struggle in many subject areas at school. This is why I believe that we must schedule reading time as a whole class activity throughout the school year.

With a minor in Social Studies for Secondary school, teaching reading was never on my to-do list. However, I found that when we did it in the class, the kids became interested (especially if I didn't assign any reading homework) and wanted to get into the book every day! This was enough encouragement for me. 

I can't say when I jumped into adding reading as units in my classroom that the delivery was perfect - oh no! I started off with a simple book - Island of the Blue Dolphins by Scott O'Dell. The thing is, I went sooooo slowly, that we took the entire first term on that one book! To be fair, we managed to learn a lot about novels and its parts, and the students loved the book. But, I found that too much time was wasted because I myself was now figuring out how I should do things!

So, by the end of the school year, I tried again, this time with Wringer, by Jerry Spinelli. I grabbed a free pdf and made it available in google classroom. We read for the morning period every day for a total of one week and 3 days! When we were finished we discussed its content, talked about theme, symbolism, characters and plot - and you know what? It was amazing! The students brought mature discussions, and were excited every day about reading! 

As a closing activity, we did a book review that I got free from the @secondaryenglishcoffeeshop blog by @AddieWilliams


What are you reading in your classroom?