Over the summer, I read Penny Kittle's inspiring and important book, "Book Love," which highlights the importance of individual, self-directed reading for students. She poses a challenge to teachers: make your students lovers of books and they will be life-long readers and learners well after they leave your classrooms. This is not an easy task, especially for high school students who claim proudly that they have never read an entire book. But Kittle's philosophy is simple: give students a wide a variety of engaging, relevant books and give kids time to read in class, and they will not be able to resist the allure of a good story.
The books I have requested all come highly recommended by teachers, librarians, and teen readers as books that will capture the attention of even the most skeptical "non-reader." I plan to devote part of every class to talk about these books, allow students to offer recommendations and talk about what they are reading, and conference with me and with each other about the books they love. My goal is to create a classroom full of readers--engaged, excited, passionate readers who can't wait to pull the next tempting title off my shelf. These books will be an important start to building that classroom library.
About my class
Over the summer, I read Penny Kittle's inspiring and important book, "Book Love," which highlights the importance of individual, self-directed reading for students. She poses a challenge to teachers: make your students lovers of books and they will be life-long readers and learners well after they leave your classrooms. This is not an easy task, especially for high school students who claim proudly that they have never read an entire book. But Kittle's philosophy is simple: give students a wide a variety of engaging, relevant books and give kids time to read in class, and they will not be able to resist the allure of a good story.
The books I have requested all come highly recommended by teachers, librarians, and teen readers as books that will capture the attention of even the most skeptical "non-reader." I plan to devote part of every class to talk about these books, allow students to offer recommendations and talk about what they are reading, and conference with me and with each other about the books they love. My goal is to create a classroom full of readers--engaged, excited, passionate readers who can't wait to pull the next tempting title off my shelf. These books will be an important start to building that classroom library.
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