Tuesday, March 24, 2009

Sharing Our Reading Lives

Have you ever had friends or parents outside of your classroom share their reading life?

I took quick picture of this chart my students helped create after a visit from a student's mom in our room. I realize that it is hard to read (sorry...I took it as I stood on a table and accidentally included my toes in the photo). The whole point of the chart was to record our thoughts about what we noticed about Mrs. Wilson's reading plans. During right to read week, we had 3 visitors share their reading plans with us. The kids have made some observations about all of the readers who visited our room.

Some things the kids and I noticed about Mrs. Wilson as a reader:
-she received ideas for reading from her husband
- she swaps books
- she reads magazines
- she reads many kinds of books
- she looks for books with pictures to help her get ideas (she shared a book just filled with pictures of rooms that she is using for redecorating for her own house)
- she reads lots of books by the same author
After spring break, we will use our learning from these readers to help us make our own reading plan for the week. A few of my students have already used some of Mrs. Wilson's ideas before break. I just picked up 3 books on reserve at Northwest Library by Aki Sogabe. After one of my readers read The Origami Master, I showed him and the class the CML website, walking them through how to reserve books at the library by the same author. He was thrilled to know how to do this and told me he went home to show his mom and dad. Sharing ideas about books and technology can go a long way.

4 comments:

Lauren said...

I love this idea. What a neat way to start your kids thinking about their reading goal and lives. Do you have a plan on how you are going to do this? Are they going to fill out a sheet or make their own poster?

Anonymous said...

I love this idea! What if parents take pictures of kids reading at home and the kids take pictures of their family members reading at home?

Thanks for sharing!
Andrea

Katie Dicesare said...

Lauren-
This poster (including the pic of the reader and the kids big ideas for the reader's habits) along with the 2 others we made will serve as anchor charts for us to experiment with new habits we can form as readers. Before break, I had the kids share out loud what habit they were going to model before r.workshop and sent them off. I also checked in and had kids share at the end of workshop. I am thinking of documenting what they are practicing on video (just bought a flip) or by creating a pod cast and emailing it home. I haven't decided yet. So much to do and so little time. I have another iMovie the kids are helping to create about how we decided to learn to make a map.

Karen said...

I love that you showed a first grader how to reserve a book at the library! You gave him a gift for life!