Amy Hansen Blog Post 2: The Pleasure Principle

I enjoyed reading the article “The Pleasure Principle” by Nancy Atwell. I agree that the importance of being a reading teacher is to allow students that simple pleasure of just a time to sit and read. I for one love to read, but I remember being forced to do required reading in middle school and high school. Some books actually surprised me and I found that I actually enjoyed reading them, but other books I absolutely hated and really never finished them. Of course because it was required reading there were also tests and papers to go along with these books, and we’ll just say I didn’t do so well. If only I would have been able to choose my own books, I probably would have enjoyed reading even much more.

In a kindergarten classroom, however, this looks much different than described with the older students in the article. We are setting the foundation of what reading workshop means and really what to do and not to do. Not to mention that it’s not an easy task to have 5-and-6-year-olds to sit quietly for more than 5 minutes to read books.

Last year, the kindergarten teachers were fortunate enough to have Dr. K purchase a reading workshop bundle created by a kindergarten teacher from Teachers Pay Teachers. I wasn’t able to use it as much as I wanted to last year due to my sweet baby’s early arrival, but I have really tried to incorporate it this year. Through the reading workshop, we begin teaching our young students the basics: how to hold a book, how to turn the pages, the parts of a book, how to look at the pictures, how to tell our own story with the pictures even if we can’t read the words, and how to read quietly the whole time as we slowly build up our quiet reading time stamina. I wish I could say that I am able to do this every day, but I’m not always able to. I know that it is an important to begin encouraging a love of reading for my students though.

Besides needing to incorporate this time every day into my schedule, I also need to work on creating a system in which students can begin choosing their own books. Right now, each child has their own book basket with books already chosen for them. We also put student created books that are made to help us learn our sight words in their book baskets as well. During reading time, students have those books to choose from to read, but they are not books they chose themselves. If I could create a system and time in our schedule, I would love for them to be able to learn how to choose those just right books themselves.