We are a community of readers - Setting the tone for the year

We are back to school. I have always loved the feeling of a fresh start and the possibilities of another school year. I always feel so torn in my position - I wear so many hats and am so many things to different groups of people. I love all aspects of my position but with so many pieces I find it difficult to do things well, where I can truly see their impact on my students.

I have decided to make changes this year in my choices of how I spend my time. This is the year of the building of a community of readers. My time and energy will be spent on this goal, working to really make an impact on my students. This year my goal is to engage students in their reading through oral, written, and visual means to foster a love of reading and promote critical and reflective thinking.

I want to establish that we are a community of readers at our school so my first task was to reflect this on the walls of the library. Over the summer I had parents send me pictures of their children "caught reading." These children were entered into a raffle for a free book from our first Book Fair. I posted their pictures on a bulletin board. While there was only a small sampling of students, I wanted to showcase their summer reading.

Next, I sent teachers a request to send me the name of a book they read over the summer. I posted teacher reading with the covers of the books they read.

Finally, I created a bulletin board of MY summer reading. I printed the covers of the 76 books I read this summer and assembled them in a wagon that used to hang in my mother's classroom.
My "welcome back" bulletin boards were complete. Visually you could see that students and teachers alike read this summer.

A change I made to our class time included dedicated time EVERY class to the discussion of reading. Inspired by Kurt Stroh, I carved out the first minutes of our class for "awesome book" sharing. Students can share an awesome book they just finished or one that they are reading right now. I want my students to reflect on their reading and practice book talking with each other. Starting our class with book recommendations sets the tone - "reading is important and helping one another find great books is valued here." And we are off...