Hooking Reluctant Readers

Every year I have a few students that require a little creativity in order to hook them into the wonderful world of reading.  What better way than to use multimedia books.  I wish I had heard of these books sooner.  Check out the podcast with author Patrick Carman, where he describes what goes into creating a multimedia book and how reluctant readers are responding to them.
Check out his personal website for more details on his books.

Are your students engaged and motivated to learn?

The best compliment I get as a teacher is when parents tell me how their child loves coming to school and that I make learning fun and exciting for them.  I think the biggest part of my students motivation for learning comes from our reading and writing workshop time.  To me the most important element during workshop times is sharing.  It is so important that we make time for kids to talk about what they're reading and writing with enthusiasm.  My enthusiasm for reading and writing carries down to them and then they motivate each other through activities such as book shares and author share time.  Students learn so much from each other when they have the chance to listen to another child's thoughts on what they're reading or writing.  My students look forward to getting to the next book on their "Books I want to read next list" and enjoy giving their book recommendations to others.
Setting up specific procedures and practicing what this share time looks and sounds like is key.  It's important that students are taught how to listen and reflect on what their classmates are saying.  This is not something that just comes naturally for most children.  I always post some guidelines for listening/sharing during these times for students to continually refer to on my Activ Board.  I have also been known to video tape the discussions and share sessions for us to reflect on as a whole class.
Take a listen...
The author of the blog site Book Whisperer, Donalyn Miller, discusses in this Choice Literacy podcast how she defines 'engaged' reading and her role in motivating students.  She talks about how she thinks one of the most important things you can do to motivate student reading is by taking time to conference with each child on a one on one basis in the beginning of the year to find out what their interests are and helping them get excited and engaged in a book.  
What do you think is important and necessary to engage the students in your classroom?

Sites to try for helping kids find a just right high interest book:
Access book talks and trailers on this blog site:  http://mrschureads.blogspot.com/
Have your kids check out "bookcasts" to find a book that interests them:  http://www.readinginaction.org/

Increasing Motivation and Comprehension

One of my favorite ways to motivate and engage my students in their independent novels is through creative and engaging book projects.  Book projects are a way to assess student comprehension and taught skills, while letting them be creative and have choice about how they share their insights and knowledge about what they've read.  My goal is to try and tap into student's higher level thinking skills, by having them take steps beyond just plot summaries and character development.  I've given my students options of things such as creating character scripts for play productions, commercials, webquests and foldables presentations (click link for awesome blog about foldables w/ examples).

I don't assign. book projects for every book my students read, but give them a heads up that they will choose one book over the next couple of months or so (depending on our schedule) to do a book project on.

Check out this book project idea:  Cereal Box Book Reports

How do you engage and motivate your students to read?

Choosing Books for Reading Instruction and Independent Reading

 Choosing Books in my Classroom:
I have spent quite a bit of time and money developing my library of picture books that I think are great resources for modeling and teaching reading comprehension strategies.  Picture books are wonderful resources for engaging children of all elementary grade levels and even for modeling specific strategies at the middle school level.  I also love to incorporate non-fiction picture books into all content areas as well.  I try to have a resource center of picture book texts available for each big umbrella topic we study.  I find that the kids get so much more out of reading and searching through these types of texts, rather than just assigning them pages in a textbook.  "Mentor texts" are also really great for modeling writing and teaching students about specific writing genres.  My students are encouraged to go to the "mentor text" area during their stages of writing to get ideas and refresh their memories about what we have discussed in mini-lessons.  Lucy Calkins gives a great list of mentor texts in her "Units of Study" series that I often refer to.  One of my favorite mentor text authors is Cynthia Rylant.

Comprehension Strategy Teaching/Independent Reading:

I came across a podcast from Sharon Taberski, author of On Solid Ground: Strategies for Teaching Reading, K-3, where she discusses Book Choice; how she chooses books for teaching comprehension strategies and guides her readers to independent book selections.  I like how Sharon said that she chooses a comprehension book not just because it is a good strategy book, but it is a book that she loves and knows the kids will love too.  She cites how important it is to engage the kids first and then look for how to incorporate strategy instruction, oral language and vocab., phrasing, and prior knowledge, etc.   For guiding independent selections she says that we need to be "a whole lot more careful about the books we put into our children's hands for independent reading."  In order to make the best use of students' independent reading time they need to be reading a book with 98-99% word accuracy.  Too often children are choosing books that they cannot read or are too easy because they've read them too many times.  She also discusses the benefits of "look books". 

How do you use picture books and mentor texts in your classroom?