Karen S.
Johnson-November Blog
Ch. 3 (“Share Your
Reading Life”) from Reading Essentials:
The Specifics You Need to Teach Reading Well
“Share Your Reading Life” is a chapter full
of wonderful ideas on how/why to share your love of reading with your
students. The only problem for me is
that I am a terribly private person and am uncomfortable sharing a lot of
myself with anyone, even my students. I
definitely need to leave my comfort zone and share more of my reading life with
my students. Our students are so eager
to know about us. It makes sense to
share what we love reading with them. I
am all too quick to share my love of Clemson football with my kids, but am
highly unlikely to share my favorite author with them.
Another drawback for me is the fact that I
am not as avid of a reader as I should be or used to be. Recreational reading wasn’t a priority in my
house. I really didn’t find much enjoyment
in reading until I was in college. I did
enjoy comic books in my early years, and when I used reading as an escape, it
became more important to me. When I
could lose myself in a book was really when I embraced reading. When I read fantasy or fictional stories to
my students, I become as animated as I possibly can in hopes that they will
love the fact that books can carry them to other places.
When I taught
third grade, I can clearly remember modeling reading to my students. During SSR time, I took that opportunity to
read as well. Unfortunately, I have not
made that a part of my first grade experience.
I suppose I feel that I should be monitoring and/or conferencing during
that time, but it would be beneficial for my students to see me read during
that time as well.
This chapter has
given me some good ideas on how to share my reading life with my students. I can see the value in that now. After reading this chapter, I am more likely
to implement author studies and book club type activities where we actually sit
around and discuss the books we are reading.
It will hopefully show the students that reading is something to be
ENJOYED and shared with each other.
It does seem to be hard to remember that students want to know about our lives as readers. I'm glad you picked up on the fact that opening this side to them will help them see that reading is something to be enjoyed and not forced during school hours. I bet your kids would LOVE to hear that you liked reading comic books. It can be eye-opening to think that you haven't really picked up a book to read for fun. However, I bet you read a lot. Clemson footballs scores, rankings, websites, blogs, professional texts...all of those count as reading and can be shared with your kids. I can't wait to hear about how sharing favorite books impacts your time with them. Giving them a voice to share their favorites is also a great idea!
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