Increase Reading. Plain. Simple.

Sound familiar?

This year I vowed to never hear this again. Wanna know what I did? I first reminded myself that, as a teacher of English, my bottom line for learning was that, by the end of the year, my students would actually like to read, write, communicate their ideas, and be inspired to do all of it.

The major change I made was this:

Use engaging mentor texts as the starting point for everything I taught.

Plain.

Simple.

I didn't use fancy curriculum; I didn't spend hours designing elaborate learning activities (ok, sometimes I did). If we worked on reading skills, then I used mentors (from novels to blog posts) that I knew my students would be interested in. If we worked on writing skills, then I used excerpts from interesting texts that would model strategies for our writing. When choosing what I would use to kick off a lesson, I made sure to use a variety of text types, choose texts that would appeal to both genders, and that they were accessible to all reading levels. I also focused on allowing students to read whatever they wanted, de-emphasizing Accelerated Reader (that's for another post), and only doing one whole class novel. One mentor that really generated interest was one used before we started writing our own book reviews. I used a book review published on the Nerdy Book Club website for A Snicker of Magic by Natalie Lloyd. We were looking at how to write a book review, but the review was so good my students wanted to read the book.

          "Bbrrinnggg," my classroom phone rings. "Hey Sue (the librarian), what can I do for ya?" I ask.
          "What are you doing in your room?" Sue remarks with a giggle.
          "Um, learning. Why? Is there a problem?"I say sarcastically.
          "Whatever you're doing is costing the library a ton of money?" Sue responds with a great laugh.
          "Oh......AWESOME!" I shout out, disrupting my class.

Can you imagine getting a call like that from your librarian? This is when I first realized that my use of mentor texts was affecting my students desire to read.

What I quickly saw was JOY, CURIOSITY, RISK-TAKING, and COLLABORATION happening all the time. Even though we were not reading the whole selection often, I peeked the curiosity of so many students that they wanted to read the whole selection. Students who had never wanted to read started reading. My students started requesting, well actually demanding, that books (where the excerpts came from) be purchased for our school library. We started having great conversations about reading, and students began to see the connection to their own writing. The best evidence showcasing the power of my one change was when several students, on several different occasions, told me that they had never liked to read or write before my class. Before their confessions I really didn't think I had done that much for my students, but their honesty got me reflecting on what was different for them. 

I made their learning authentic. I showed them what real writers do. I gave them choices of great literature to read. I made class interesting, with one change. 

I love when my thinking and the ideas from several different professional reads come together to inform my decisions in my classroom. Reading Book Whisperer and Reading in the Wild by Donalyn Miller last summer coupled with reading 1o Things Writers Need to Know by Jeff Anderson the summer before helped me make this one change.

Think about one change you can make for your students this coming year that could make learning meaningful. It can be plain and simple.