The Book Whisperer
Donalyn Miller was a 6th grade language arts teacher in Texas who is said to have a “gift": She can turn even the most reluctant (or, in her words, “dormant”) readers into students who can’t put their books down. This blog is no longer being updated.
Education
Opinion
Esme Raji Codell Reviews The Book Whisperer
Editor's Note:
Esme Raji Codell, reading guru and author of How to Get Your Child to Love Reading, gives Donalyn Miller's book a great review in her blog.
Esme Raji Codell, reading guru and author of How to Get Your Child to Love Reading, gives Donalyn Miller's book a great review in her blog.
Education
Opinion
So Many Books, So Little Time
Keenly aware of how little time we have left together, my students and I race to finish the books we have borrowed from each other. Students wistfully return books held hostage in their lockers and bedrooms. Donations for our school-wide book swap arrive each day, and I cull and examine our classroom library in preparation for my move to a new classroom down the hall (the only time I have ever admitted we might have too many books!). The end of the year is a bittersweet time for me—a mix of pride in my students’ reading accomplishments, and sorrow at losing the wonderful children I have grown to love. Soliciting reflections about their reading experiences, I ask my students to make reading plans for the future, encouraging them to maintain reading habits they have cultivated over the past nine months. Class discussions revolve around our favorite books of the year and those books we want to read in the future. As part of my reading community, I share our list of favorites with you, as well as a few titles from my never-ending to-read-pile.
Education
Opinion
Stress Reading
A recent study reports that reading may be the best way to reduce stress. With as little as six minutes of reading, your heart rate slows and you relax, losing your everyday cares between the pages. But if reading reduces stress, you wouldn’t know it these days looking in classrooms across America. It is spring, and testing season is upon us. For students and their teachers, reading for test performance induces, rather than reduces stress. In a few days, Texas' students will take TAKS, the Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills, and the massive preparations for this test convey that reading is serious, reading is challenging, reading is an obstacle course of traps and pitfalls, but it is certainly not relaxing.
Education
Opinion
Donalyn Miller: Live on The Air
Editor's Note:
Donalyn Miller will be on North Texas' NPR affiliate, KERA, today, Tuesday, April 21 from Noon-1pm CST. She will be on a show called Think with Krys Boyd, talking about reading and her book. To listen live, go here and to listen later (as a downloadable podcast), go here.
Donalyn Miller will be on North Texas' NPR affiliate, KERA, today, Tuesday, April 21 from Noon-1pm CST. She will be on a show called Think with Krys Boyd, talking about reading and her book. To listen live, go here and to listen later (as a downloadable podcast), go here.
Education
Opinion
A Book in Every Backpack II
I am drowning in books, but what a way to go. My bookshelves at home overflow with beloved titles I read again and again. I dedicated a three-shelf bookcase in my living room to the books I want to read--books I have borrowed, purchased, or checked out from my school and public libraries. Whenever I embark on a day of housecleaning, I begin by reshelving the books my family and I stack on every available surface.
Education
Opinion
A Book in Every Backpack
In my e-mail inbox today, I received an invitation to examine exactly how much money my school district will get from the federal stimulus package. I agree that school districts need help right now. With a flat housing market and foreclosures across the country, school districts have lost a major source of funding—property tax revenues. The American Recovery and Investment Act of 2009 prevents thousands of teachers from losing their jobs and sustains vital programs. If there is money left over, I have ideas about how to spend it (I bet we all do), and I don’t have to look any farther than my classroom.
Education
Opinion
Never Too Old: Reading Aloud to Independent Readers
I almost didn’t recognize her. With flat-ironed hair and makeup, Madeline did not look like the gangly sixth grader with frizzy red hair who I remembered from my class four years ago. “Hi Mrs. Miller,” she said, “I am assigned to your room today.” Participating in Writers’ Day at a local intermediate school, I was asked to teach two rotations of writing lessons to budding 5th and 6th grade authors. High school volunteers, like Madeline, were paired with teachers to help with crowd control and work with the younger kids. I laughed, “I hope you don’t mind, but you will have to listen to me read the same story twice today.” She smiled, “I don’t mind. I don’t think any teachers have read out loud to me since I was in your class.”
Education
Opinion
Mind the Gap: Engaging Gifted Readers
March 10th marks the 95th anniversary of Harriet Tubman’s death. Tubman is famous for leading slaves to freedom via the Underground Railroad, a network of safe houses and trails from the South to the North. Nowadays, the term “Underground” represents other networks like the London Underground and subcultures apart from the mainstream like Underground music and art. The Underground represents freedom, escape, and unfortunately, hiding. I use the term "underground readers" to describe gifted readers, those students who live in a world that is often outside the confines of classroom cultures, which are often pitched toward developing readers.
Education
Opinion
Share a Story/ Shape a Future
Five bloggers, members of the kidlitosphere, an online community which promotes children's books and reading, had a crazy idea. Why not use their Internet connections (no pun intended) to create an online blog tour that celebrates reading? Their idea blossomed into an Internet-wide event with scores of bloggers lining up to participate (The Book Whisperer included!). Share a Story/ Shape a Future begins March 9th.
Education
Opinion
Waiting to Exhale
“If you want to be a writer,” Stephen King says, “you must do two things above all else: read a lot and write a lot.” Reciprocal processes, reading and writing naturally fit together. The most prolific readers are the best writers, and my students and I write every day, as well as read. We inhale rich, powerful language, gain sustenance from it, and create our own ideas. We must read so we can write, and we must write so we have more to read.
Education
Opinion
Expert Readers Wanted
It is flu season, and on the days when I look out to see seven empty desks, I am grateful to be a language arts teacher. Reluctant to start new material when up to a third of my students are out sick, I know that no day is wasted. We can always move forward by reading and writing.
Education
Opinion
Ending Readicide
A recent post from NYC Educator recounts an exchange with students about reading and how much they hate it. It is not hard to see the connection between this conversation and Readicide: How Schools are Killing Reading and What You Can Do about It, Kelly Gallagher’s newest book. I mentioned Readicide in my last post and invited readers to check out Kelly’s book and post questions about it.
Education
Opinion
Parents: Reading Role Models or Victims of Readicide?
Last week, the Department of Education released its latest report about the state of reading in America. Results, estimated from the 2003 National Assessment of Adult Literacy (NAAL), indicate that 32 million adult Americans lack fundamental literacy skills. Leaders in adult literacy education cite undiagnosed learning disabilities, immigration, and high school dropout rates as factors, but illiterate adults are not the only ones who aren’t reading. An oft-quoted 2007 Associated Press Poll found that 27% of adult Americans did not read a single book in 2006. It seems that fewer and fewer adults are reading—some due to poor reading ability and others by choice.
Education
Opinion
Reading Rabbit Holes
With the holiday break winding down (we have to report back to school on Friday for staff development), I am in work-avoidance mode. Instead of taking down my Christmas decorations, lesson planning or writing, I decided to clean out the bookmarks in my computer under the guise of doing something productive. After two hours, I realized that I had fallen into the rabbit hole, the colorful, magical, random world that so often sucks me into the Internet. I have some gems in the rabbit hole—Websites that make my eyes glaze over with reading bliss, and surprisingly, enhance my classroom instruction and my conversations with students about books.