Our grade school does a Family Reading Night once a semester. It's run by the grade school teachers who do an amazing job getting the parents in by also hosting the 7th grade wax museum and 8th grade science fair. We've also started getting my high school students involved through being guest readers and promoting our summer library program. It's a community event. We also host a book fair during this time when parents can buy books from the Scholastic program. They have a great program and good books, but the high school, and certainly adult selections, are lacking.
So I had an idea... We're trying to promote literacy for the entire community here, right? And I have not only older books I'm culling from my stacks but also books that have been donated that are much more interesting for an adult audience than my students, why not set up a table and make these books available to the parents for free? So that's what we did this year. My high school students and I set up a table where we displayed their literacy research for the parents and we placed the available books in with the displays. We had four large boxes of books and distributed an entire box that night. A week later, we had parent-teacher conferences. Again I set up a table of books and we distributed another entire box. I had parents commenting on what a nice idea it was and that they had books at home they could contribute. They were so excited to have these books. I loved seeing their eyes light up, the same way my students' do when they get a good book in their hands. Hmm... ok, so how can I keep this going?
My next plan is to host a community book swap. We'll collect as many books as we can from local thrift stores or community partners and invite the community in to swap books for all ages. Now to find the right time to do it.
Have any of you hosted school book swaps? Any suggestions or ideas for me?
Thursday, October 29, 2015
Monday, October 26, 2015
The Flipped Classroom
We've all heard a lot about the flipped classroom these days. Students watch videos while at home and then we help them practice what they've "already learned" when they come to class. Recently I've flipped my classroom, but not in the usual way.
For the past two years, the basic format of my class has been
1. writing warm-up-- response to a thoughtful question, noticing sentences, maybe a poem to read together
2. discussion of the warm-up
3. mini-lesson
4. workshop (reading or writing, depending on the day or class)
However, after attending the IRC Conference last week, I decided to start putting my reading portion at the beginning of EVERY class-- whether it's a reading or writing day. Richard Allington says every kid should read an absolute minimum of 15 minutes a day at school every day. (Minimum-- remember!) So I chose to start my students' class with reading.
1. We update our daily progress book chart (a la Penny Kittle) and
2. then I set my timer for 15 minutes. (It really does help to set an auditory alarm because then no one is watching the clock-- including you!)
3. At the end of those 15 minutes, we then have a mini-lesson and
4. have reading or writing time afterwards with conferences.
How has it worked?
I love it so far! My students seem more focused on reading because it's a specific amount of time (they aren't waiting for the bell for class to be over) and they know they'll have time to discuss when we're done. When we get to the mini-lesson, my students' heads are already swimming with texts because they're fresh in their minds. It makes our discussions richer. Using Kittle's daily book chart has been nice, too. I have a few students who dislike it because it's "another thing to do," but remember, our best readers often hate tracking their reading. (I'm apparently one of the weird ones. I love watching that progress bar fill up on my GoodReads!) Mostly, my students find that they are reading more now. And they can really see the progress. For some of my readers who would consider themselves non-readers, they have a hard time seeing their progress grow in their thick books, but seeing those numbers grow makes it more real. They see that they are moving through the book. And so then it also helps motivate them.
Can you give it a try in your room? Let me know what you think!
For the past two years, the basic format of my class has been
1. writing warm-up-- response to a thoughtful question, noticing sentences, maybe a poem to read together
2. discussion of the warm-up
3. mini-lesson
4. workshop (reading or writing, depending on the day or class)
However, after attending the IRC Conference last week, I decided to start putting my reading portion at the beginning of EVERY class-- whether it's a reading or writing day. Richard Allington says every kid should read an absolute minimum of 15 minutes a day at school every day. (Minimum-- remember!) So I chose to start my students' class with reading.
1. We update our daily progress book chart (a la Penny Kittle) and
2. then I set my timer for 15 minutes. (It really does help to set an auditory alarm because then no one is watching the clock-- including you!)
3. At the end of those 15 minutes, we then have a mini-lesson and
4. have reading or writing time afterwards with conferences.
How has it worked?
I love it so far! My students seem more focused on reading because it's a specific amount of time (they aren't waiting for the bell for class to be over) and they know they'll have time to discuss when we're done. When we get to the mini-lesson, my students' heads are already swimming with texts because they're fresh in their minds. It makes our discussions richer. Using Kittle's daily book chart has been nice, too. I have a few students who dislike it because it's "another thing to do," but remember, our best readers often hate tracking their reading. (I'm apparently one of the weird ones. I love watching that progress bar fill up on my GoodReads!) Mostly, my students find that they are reading more now. And they can really see the progress. For some of my readers who would consider themselves non-readers, they have a hard time seeing their progress grow in their thick books, but seeing those numbers grow makes it more real. They see that they are moving through the book. And so then it also helps motivate them.
Can you give it a try in your room? Let me know what you think!
Thursday, October 1, 2015
Tracking Reading-- Leading by Example
Donalyn Miller says, "Without question, I am a better teacher because I read." I need my students to know that I am reading just as much as I'm asking them to read. I need them to see me as a resource for finding great books. I want them to see that sometimes I struggle through an uninteresting book and that I don't always read a book all the way through before I start another one. This comes through in conversations that we have, but it also needs to be visual and obvious. We can't always talk about it and I sometimes am so focused on what I'm teaching that I forget to use my own experiences to help guide what we're doing. So here's how I make sure my students see my progress, too.
On my board, next to the date, I have two columns: "Mrs. Folkman is reading" and "Mrs. Folkman is writing." This helps my students see that I'm right there with them. In previous years, I simply listed titles and page numbers for each day, but I've found that this visual works a lot better. I print a small picture of the cover and each day that I make reading progress in a book, I add the new page number under a new line. This helps students see the size of chunks that I read, that they are sometimes much larger and sometimes much smaller. That some days I focus on reading one book and not another. That the book we're reading for leadership team is read in small chunks throughout the semester and I'll read it in those chunks instead of reading ahead so that I can better discuss it. When I finish a book, the picture stays the remainder of that week and then moves over to my bulletin board where I keep my progress sheet for the year which is exactly like the sheet I require them to use. It's essentially the Atwell chart from In the Middle.
The visuals of the book covers help them see the books stack up. The list always gets longer and longer each year, but it's really easy to overlook a piece of paper. I also display the books I've finished on the board ledge for a while so that if students take an interest, the books are easy to find.
[edit: clarification made, photo added]
On my board, next to the date, I have two columns: "Mrs. Folkman is reading" and "Mrs. Folkman is writing." This helps my students see that I'm right there with them. In previous years, I simply listed titles and page numbers for each day, but I've found that this visual works a lot better. I print a small picture of the cover and each day that I make reading progress in a book, I add the new page number under a new line. This helps students see the size of chunks that I read, that they are sometimes much larger and sometimes much smaller. That some days I focus on reading one book and not another. That the book we're reading for leadership team is read in small chunks throughout the semester and I'll read it in those chunks instead of reading ahead so that I can better discuss it. When I finish a book, the picture stays the remainder of that week and then moves over to my bulletin board where I keep my progress sheet for the year which is exactly like the sheet I require them to use. It's essentially the Atwell chart from In the Middle.
The visuals of the book covers help them see the books stack up. The list always gets longer and longer each year, but it's really easy to overlook a piece of paper. I also display the books I've finished on the board ledge for a while so that if students take an interest, the books are easy to find.
Saturday, September 5, 2015
Books are Taking Over Our Classroom!
Yes! The best thing about walking back into my room over the summer is seeing the books pile up. The new books I've purchased. The books that the amazing janitors have saved from an uncertain fate from all over the building. The books that graduated seniors return before packing up to leave. When the majority of my books are there, I don't have enough shelf space. And although I do lose some books every year, I still end up accumulating more books than I've lost. So this year, for the first time, I'm starting to actually go through and *sob* get rid of books.
When I started teaching in 2006-2007, my inherited classroom had maybe 50 books. Although they were good books, they typically don't get checked out. Some of them are incredibly old or just plain look awful. In my previous nine years of teaching, I've never gotten rid of them because any time I consider it, I get this voice that says, "This is some student's home-run book. This is the book that will capture that one student and if I don't have it, I won't catch them." So I had to come up with a way to go through these books, but still make sure they had every opportunity to catch a student.
So here's what I'm doing- once a week, I'm going to find three books that probably should be thrown out. (Now, I'll be honest, I'm not actually pitching these books. If they're still in good shape, I'm taking them to my local Goodwill. If they're falling apart, I'm squirreling them away in my craft room for all of those cute book crafts on Pinterest that I pinned and will likely never get around to.) But these three "throw away" books are going to get a book talk. This week, I chose from the horror genre which, despite my kids loving horror in movies, never get checked out. I have two Stephen Kings and The Exorcist. I can tell you for a fact, from the names on the old check out cards, that the Stephen King books have been in the English department at my school since the early 90's. They have been loved and read. But now they're old and torn up, so my kids don't give them a second look unless I can find a way to do it.
After I've described the books, I tell my students that these books will be on the podium for one week. If they're checked out, they will stay, if not, they go. It's going to be that simple. Like the book ratings or the new book previews, it takes maybe 5 minutes of our time. It gets kids to hear about books. This week, one of the three books was checked out already. This was not simply a pleasant aside to our day, it was instructional. My students learned that popular horror books are very often turned into movies, especially Stephen King books and that Stephen King is an incredibly prolific author (and the meaning of the word prolific!)
Update on wait-list books. Check out all these lists! Almost every new book I previewed got a wait-list and they keep getting longer each day!
Note: How do I know just from the names that the books are from the 90's? Are they stereotypical 90's names? (Are there stereotypical 90's names?) Interesting fact-- I teach at the school I attended. I recognize the names. ;)
Coming Soon: How do we track our reading?
When I started teaching in 2006-2007, my inherited classroom had maybe 50 books. Although they were good books, they typically don't get checked out. Some of them are incredibly old or just plain look awful. In my previous nine years of teaching, I've never gotten rid of them because any time I consider it, I get this voice that says, "This is some student's home-run book. This is the book that will capture that one student and if I don't have it, I won't catch them." So I had to come up with a way to go through these books, but still make sure they had every opportunity to catch a student.
So here's what I'm doing- once a week, I'm going to find three books that probably should be thrown out. (Now, I'll be honest, I'm not actually pitching these books. If they're still in good shape, I'm taking them to my local Goodwill. If they're falling apart, I'm squirreling them away in my craft room for all of those cute book crafts on Pinterest that I pinned and will likely never get around to.) But these three "throw away" books are going to get a book talk. This week, I chose from the horror genre which, despite my kids loving horror in movies, never get checked out. I have two Stephen Kings and The Exorcist. I can tell you for a fact, from the names on the old check out cards, that the Stephen King books have been in the English department at my school since the early 90's. They have been loved and read. But now they're old and torn up, so my kids don't give them a second look unless I can find a way to do it.
After I've described the books, I tell my students that these books will be on the podium for one week. If they're checked out, they will stay, if not, they go. It's going to be that simple. Like the book ratings or the new book previews, it takes maybe 5 minutes of our time. It gets kids to hear about books. This week, one of the three books was checked out already. This was not simply a pleasant aside to our day, it was instructional. My students learned that popular horror books are very often turned into movies, especially Stephen King books and that Stephen King is an incredibly prolific author (and the meaning of the word prolific!)
Update on wait-list books. Check out all these lists! Almost every new book I previewed got a wait-list and they keep getting longer each day!
Note: How do I know just from the names that the books are from the 90's? Are they stereotypical 90's names? (Are there stereotypical 90's names?) Interesting fact-- I teach at the school I attended. I recognize the names. ;)
Coming Soon: How do we track our reading?
Wednesday, August 26, 2015
How do I organize my library?
I have to say that I am incredibly lucky. I got the largest classroom (minus the gym) to call my own. I have the luxury of 6 student computers to make the yearbook and to use as a mini-lab for writing. And I still have a complete classroom desk area surrounded by books. My classroom library has over 1,300 books. This has not come easily. It has taken hard work curating a library of books to create my curriculum. You see, I have no textbooks. I teach all levels of high school English at my rural school- 5 whole classes. My library is my curriculum. Besides my students, it's the most important thing in the room.
How do I organize my books so that we can find them?
I use a simple genre system. I switched to book bins, sorted by genre, last year because it seemed a great way to get my students to really take a look at books. I've found that if I put my book on the shelf, spines out, that students don't really look at the books, their eyes simply pass them. Think judging a book by its cover is bad? My students were judging it by the spine. I don't have enough room to put them all covers out, so book bins work a lot better.
My students can pull out a book bin and actually interact with the books. They see the covers, they feel the pages as they flip from book to book. They are now much more likely to physically hand books to each other with these book bins. They take one or two and gather around them in groups and hand books back and forth. They make recommendations to each other. More books get checked out and the students are much more involved in seeking out books.
I do not put the books in any specific order in the genre bins. My students never worry about putting a book in just the right place which means they re-shelve a book they've decided they don't want much more often than before. I don't put the genre bins themselves in any particular order except to keep like bins together. As my library grows and changes, it's much easier to move around individually labeled bins when I run out of space than it was to re-label shelves in my system before. And the biggest benefit? I can fit more books on my shelves!
I buy the bins for $1 at my local Dollar Tree when I can find them. They don't always have them (and I haven't found them on their website) so I buy a lot every time I find them.
But Mrs. Folkman, you're out of space!
Yes, and this year is the first time I'm really going to need to cull the shelves really well. I have an idea for that which I'll share next week when I start that project. Stay tuned.
How do I organize my books so that we can find them?
I use a simple genre system. I switched to book bins, sorted by genre, last year because it seemed a great way to get my students to really take a look at books. I've found that if I put my book on the shelf, spines out, that students don't really look at the books, their eyes simply pass them. Think judging a book by its cover is bad? My students were judging it by the spine. I don't have enough room to put them all covers out, so book bins work a lot better.
I do not put the books in any specific order in the genre bins. My students never worry about putting a book in just the right place which means they re-shelve a book they've decided they don't want much more often than before. I don't put the genre bins themselves in any particular order except to keep like bins together. As my library grows and changes, it's much easier to move around individually labeled bins when I run out of space than it was to re-label shelves in my system before. And the biggest benefit? I can fit more books on my shelves!
I buy the bins for $1 at my local Dollar Tree when I can find them. They don't always have them (and I haven't found them on their website) so I buy a lot every time I find them.
But Mrs. Folkman, you're out of space!
Yes, and this year is the first time I'm really going to need to cull the shelves really well. I have an idea for that which I'll share next week when I start that project. Stay tuned.
Sunday, August 23, 2015
How Do You Pick Books with Limited Funds?
Another way I help generate interest in books, especially new books, is that I involve my students in selecting the new books for our room. Each day on my SmartBoard presentation for my classes, I include books or authors in some way. Because I have this presentation, it's easy to include a few slides that have prospective books on them, give a quick summary and ask students to rate them. So here's how it works.
1. I select some sort of book list to present to the class. I started with Becky Anderson's recommended books for teens from the Illinois Reading Council Conference and Anderson's Bookshops. I get a new list each year at the conference and it's a great starting point. I've also used lists from Book Riot or from browsing Pinterest.
2. I honestly just go in order from the list and select 3 books per day. I put a picture of the book cover on my presentation. Each class period I show them the 3 slides with the 3 books and give a quick summary. For example...
1. I select some sort of book list to present to the class. I started with Becky Anderson's recommended books for teens from the Illinois Reading Council Conference and Anderson's Bookshops. I get a new list each year at the conference and it's a great starting point. I've also used lists from Book Riot or from browsing Pinterest.
2. I honestly just go in order from the list and select 3 books per day. I put a picture of the book cover on my presentation. Each class period I show them the 3 slides with the 3 books and give a quick summary. For example...
"Red Queen is about a world where people can have red or silver blood. If you're red, you're common. If you're silver, you're royalty and have some sort of magic. However, our protagonist has red blood AND magic. It's discovered and the royal family decides to hide her to keep her safe. But there's a growing rebellion of Reds. Where will the protagonist's loyalties lie?"
So how do I decide what to say about books I don't have in my classroom and that I haven't read? I read the Amazon blurb and put it into my own words. Sometimes this works great, and sometimes it is horrible. Some of those are really awfully written and you can't get a good feel for the book. Mostly, however, it works out.
I try to hide my own interest or disinterest in a book because I want the students to give me their own opinions, but I'm sure it seeps through sometimes.
3. As I'm telling my students the summary, I've asked them to rate the book on a 1-5 scale on a little piece of paper I've given them. It's pretty simple. I ask them to put the title (or an abbreviation thereof) and choose a number with 1 being uninterested and 5 being very interested. My students like to be funny and put very long decimals sometimes or even write mathematical equations for me to solve. I enjoy this. (I round the decimals, if you wanted to know.)
4. After I've collected the slips of paper (and I literally just use scraps. Papers discarded in the recycling bin. Junk mail. Old DOL slips from when I used to do those. Whatever I can find with a blank side.) I take about 2-3 minutes to sort them during my prep. I want some very simple data. How many kids rated the book a 5, 4, or 3. I write that data in a notebook and recycle the slips.
Why does this work?
My students hear about lots of stories (which is also great for their writing ideas!) They start talking to each other about books. When the book comes in later, they remember that we've already talked about it and now they're excited as soon as it comes in. The book will be in someone's hands within a day.
How do I display what books we're getting?
Using the data I've collected, I can determine which book is my next priority to purchase. I then have a small display at the front of the room. It simply has the next two books we're going to get, how much it costs, and how much money we've earned so far from Bing points. The top book, Playlist for the Dead has accumulated all $15 and has been ordered. The List will be next, but we only need $10 to buy that one.
How do you decide what books to buy for your room?
Saturday, August 22, 2015
Get Books in Their Hands
 |
| Only about half of the books I acquired for my room over the summer. |
If you're like me, you spent your summer acquiring books for your classroom. I frequently scour my local thrifts stores, I do my daily Bing searches for points, I also simply end up buying books that I've been dying to read. And there are always a few books the school purchases for me-- that's how I always choose to use my "supply" budget from the school. If you teach secondary, you have a lot of classes and a lot of students. I teach 5 assigned courses and 2 independent courses this year. How do I let all of my students have a chance to check out the new books? Here's my solution.
This is my quick and simple solution for getting a lot of excitement generated for my new books each year. It also gives every student a chance to have access to them.
Coming up: How to choose books for the room
Friday, August 21, 2015
What is the Book Bubble?
I went to a small liberal arts college here in the Midwest called Millikin University. It was completely different from the town around it and people talked about the campus being the Milli-bubble. Inside the bubble was very academically focused. It was warm and inviting. Everywhere you looked, it was undoubtedly a college. You were surrounded by like-minded people. It was home away from home where you could learn, explore, attempt new things. When I think of my classroom, I want it to be like that bubble. I call mine the Book Bubble. I want students, teachers, administrators, and parents to walk into my room and know, undoubtedly, that it is an English room. I want books to be the first thing someone sees. I would not be offended if someone asked me if it were the school library. I want to fill my room with students who are book-minded. They don't always come to me that way, so I have to develop that. In this blog, I hope to explain how I attempt to make my own Book Bubble so that perhaps you can create yours, too.