A theme I've been drawn to lately in my reading, is one of creating readers. What does it mean to be a reader? To some, it's being a person who is simply able to read. To me, it is not only the ability, but the desire to do so. Steven Layne calls it, "the skill and the will". Stop and think about your students for a moment. How many of them sit down and pull out a book before you ask them to? How many do you see walking with a book open? How many have a book with them everywhere they go? Are they talking about them at lunch, recommending books to one another? Hopefully your answers are, many of them! I'm afraid that the reality is not as many as we'd like. We need to give our students the opportunity to crave reading. Book talks paired with classroom library organization is a great start to creating that opportunity.
In a nutshell, a book talk is 3-4 powerful minutes of conversation designed to connect readers to books. Steven Layne records information about each book he reads in an effort to later give kids valuable information that helps them make decisions about books. He delivers several each day, as does author, Penny Kittle. They are really very simple and include a few key components; hold the book, know the book, share something from the book kids will connect to, and consider reading a powerful paragraph or page. If you're tech savvy, like our own Nick Davis, you might even make your own book trailer to invite kids to read. Anticipation questions can also help spark interest and even friendly debates between students that encourage them to read and discuss their different points of view. Try one! I guarantee you'll need to go looking for multiple copies of whatever you promote. Now that they're excited, let's make sure they can find what they're looking for.
Imagine walking into Barnes and Noble in search of the recently published science fiction only to find all of the books no longer categorized. The newest in Marie Lu's, Legend series is next to Shakespeare's, Romeo and Juliet. How long would you be willing to look for what you wanted? Barnes and Noble would never adopt that policy because they would never have repeat customers. Well, because they have their books organized and categorized into sections that have meaningful headings. We want repeat customers. Make it as easy for your students to find the books they wants in your classroom library as it is for us to find what we want at Barnes and Noble. Allow kids to independently navigate your classroom library by sorting books into genre and/or author. Heck, you can even add a "popular titles" or "books just in" section.
In the grand scheme of things, these are two simple, manageable ways to increase engagement and begin to ignite a passion that may just lead to lifelong reading.
