Response to the Atwell article

I wholeheartedly agree with Atwell that extrinsic rewards (principals shaving heads, pizza parties--which I'm guilty of doing) do not lead to good reading. The desire to read has to come from within and I believe that the best way to get there is to be constantly sharing books, not only what the kids are reading, but for me to share with them what I'm reading.

A few years ago, during SSR, my chosen book was The Lovely Bones. I believe I cried every day that I read it, but I thought it was important for kids to see that a book can do that for you if you connect with it. And every single day they'd ask me what was happening and whether I thought I would make it through SSR tear-free. And then we'd talk about their books, and ideas for new titles would be flying left and right.

I argue that all of these things that Atwell wants us to teach can be taught while also teaching novels. If the right novel is chosen, the whole class can experience an amazing learning experience instead of just a few.

Right now, I'm drowning. Just absolutely drowning. And I'm not teaching as well as I do when I am reading books on my own for fun so that I can have book talks with kids. The excitement about reading really is dependent on the AR program right now. And, in fact, I am in process of teaching myself to speed read so that I can contribute to book talks again for the first time all year.

Whether it's called SSR, DEAR, or whatever is really splitting hairs and is a matter of semantics. Students reading for pleasure is what we really need. Honestly, add AR into that equation and out the window goes the pleasure part of the reading. Just this week I had a kid who brought a Dr. Seuss book to me to get the last point he needed for AR. To me, that just exemplifies what we've done to our reading program.

I don't think it's a matter of whether we teach classroom sets of novels, I use that as my opportunity to do mini-lessons on how to read well, I think it's a matter of not making reading feel like punishment or like that thing you have the kids do when you need to get paper-grading done.