This weekend I found a book called The Book Whisperer: Awakening the Inner Reader in Every Child by Donalyn Miller. Miller is a sixth grade language arts teacher. She boasts that she has never met a child she couldn't turn into a reader and the children in her classroom read 40-50 books during the year she has them in sixth grade. Her own love of books is infectious and inspiring. I could feel her enthusiasm as I read.
Being a homeschool mom, not everything that she discussed in the book was relevant. I skipped over the chapters on testing and state standards. However, I read her reasons for dispensing with worksheets, book reports, and vocabulary lists with great interest. I have never done these things with my own children, but found her explanations very interesting and enlightened. She is obviously well informed and experienced in her field.
She classifies readers into three groups: developing, reluctant, and underground. A developing reader is a child who is behind in his reading abilities. He usually doesn't enjoy reading probably because he spends so little time doing it and it is so laborious. She demonstrates statistically how the best cure for increasing the ability to read is.....ta-da....to read. Imagine that. She meets a student where he is and then lets them read more and more and more.
A reluctant reader is a student who reads whenever he is assigned reading, but does not ever choose to read. Reading is something that is done in school or for school and is avoided on weekends and during summer break. Miller's entire goal and focus is to convince students that reading is enjoyable and can and should be done for pleasure. She makes sure there is time during every school day for quiet reading. She also teaches her students to have a book handy and turn to it whenever there are interruptions or wasted time during the day. She never assigns 'busy work' for quick learners because they always have a book to read instead. Because her students develop this habit, they begin reading at the bus stop, at home, and comparing all the places and times they have found to read. She is a fountain of suggestions and spends a great deal of time getting to know her students and suggesting books she thinks they may enjoy. Since it is sincere, it is well received. And since she is very well read she has a wealth of knowledge to pull from and can discuss almost anything with her students. She also takes their suggestions and reads things they tell her they enjoyed. It becomes a relationship based on literature.
An underground reader is the type of reader I was in school. These students have a book with them in every class and work assignments as quickly as they can so that they can read. They often read sneakily in class and skip assignments to get through a good book. I read almost none of the assigned books in my AP English class in high school. I had my own reading material that was important to me and I could glean enough of the plot from class discussion to usually do well on the exams.
Which brings me to the hinge of her program: her students always choose their own books. They don't read books as a class, although she does read out-loud often. Again, this has never been an issue in my home. My children have always chosen their own books to read. But, how does she track what they are reading, make sure they are reading, and evaluate comprehension? This is another exciting idea that I am incoporating in my home. My children now all have 'reading folders'. In this folder is a tally sheet for keeping track of how many books she reads in each genre: poetry, traditional literature (myth, fairy tale, legend), fantasy, science fiction, realistic fiction, historical fiction, mystery, biography (including autobiography and memoir) and informational. I do not have a requirement for reading a variety of books, but in my home this happens naturally because my children are exposed to a wide array of literature. I think it will be interesting for them to see where they read the most and see if they want to try things they haven't in the past. There is also a sheet for recording books they want to read in the future. Things they see or hear about and don't want to forget. (This is a huge problem for me. I have books stacked all over my bedroom so that I don't forget that I want to read them someday.) There is a page to record the name, author, and date of books read. And then there are blank lined pages, about 75, on which they can write to me about their literature experiences. This is really the spine of the folder. I told my children that they have 48 hours to write to me about what they are reading. This can be anything about any book: what they like, don't like, want to read, don't want to read, is exciting, scary, disturbing, inspiring, etc. I will write back and return the folder with in 48 hours myself, and the cycle will begin again. We will keep a literature diary together. Epistles!
We spent time today discussing each of these genres and what they mean. We decided how to classify a book. Then we rearranged all of our fiction books. My nonfiction was already organized according to topic, but our fiction books are helter skelter on about three bookshelves. We unshelved all of them and then we all went through piles of books and reshelved them according to genre. I will admit that I need now to go organize a little more. In the bustle, not every series or author stayed together, and I would like to shelve the historical fiction according to time period. But for the most part it is done.
I have also committed to giving my children more time to read every day without interruption. And, they have committed to having book ready to read when we have interruptions. (Phone calls, running toddlers potty, changing the laundry, and helping a sibling are all real problems in my homeschool.) Now, the children can sit quietly and read while waiting instead of fighting or whining.
Wow! This has been a long post. I've probably lost my audience. But, I have been inspired and this book has created some positive change in my home.
PS She has numerous suggestions for books that her students have read and enjoyed throughout the book (I kept jotting down titles as I read) and she has a list at the back by genre, although as anyone who has ever made a list of good books knows, it is never comprehensive and is outdated the minute it is written.
