Mrs. W's Room

Am I killing my students' love of reading?  I recently finished the book Readicide  by Kelly Gallagher and felt compelled to write about it.  I've been on a Gallagher kick this last year.  On one hand his ideas have changed my teaching for the better. On the other hand, his ideas make me question everything I do, sending me into an existential crisis. Okay, maybe not that far, but you get the idea. One thing in particular that struck a cord was Gallagher's harsh words about Accelerated Reader. I have struggled for a while to make sense of AR, but Readicide was the first logical argument I have heard against using it. In Gallagher's classroom, students are required to read one recreational book a month and complete a "one-pager", a short assignment that asks students about their books.  No points, no quizzes, no logs. There is less accountability and less reward with this approach, but Gallagher stands by it. Notably, he stressed that it is essential t

I started this post last week, and well...you know...got distracted!  Teachers never get distracted, right? I have my seventh graders involved in literature circles right now.  This  was the article that got me started on literature circles a few years ago. I got tired of kids nodding off when reading a novel, so I did something about it. It's one of those things that takes a lot of time to set up, explain, and model, but once the students get the hang of it, it's a magical thing.   I even heard one student say, "This is the first book that I really, actually  read in a long time." Hallelujah! They are all reading Esperanza Rising ,   but in the future, I would really like to try student-selected novels with literature circles.  One thing I'm still trying to get better at is gauging their comprehension throughout the process.   We are also plugging away on Genius Hour.  I'm learning a lot about how to improve it next year. Kourtney's experimenting w