Independent Reading Meets the 21st Century

Last year, I read The Book Whisperer by Donalyn Miller.

This book reaffirmed my belief in the importance of independent reading.  It also empowered me to take a long look at the independent reading I was requesting of my 6th graders.  Mrs. Miller is also a 6th grade teacher who inspired her students to embrace academic rigor in their personal readings.  Her students were being required to read 50+ books during the school year.  Mine were being asked to read one a month.

I then read Kelly Gallagher's Reading Reasons (Stenhouse 2003) and saw this astounding statistic:

Students in the top five percent of the national reading scores read 144 times more than students in the bottom five percent.  The average time spent reading for all grades is 7.1 minutes a day in public schools and around the  nation.  There is a strong correlation between time spent reading and higher test scores. In a study of fifth graders by Anders, Wilson and Fielding, the following correlation was found:

Percentile rank	# of minutes reading text per day	Estimated number of words read per year
98	90.7	4,733,000
90	40.4	2,357,000
70	21.7	1,168,000
50	12.9	601,000
20	3.1	134,000
10	1.6	51,100

I began thinking....how can I as a reading teacher, compete against computers? Social networking? The internet? Computer games? And the list goes on...

Areas to Grow!

In Melissa's Demo today on poetry, I realize that I need to add more poetry to my classroom.  Actually, I don't do poetry.  I had a really hard time picking a poem for our Poetry Walk.  I found myself on The Poetry Foundation website wanting to read more and more poetry.  I finally settled on the following poem:




Do I need to add poetry to my teaching? Yes. 
Is it outside of my comfort zone?  Yes.
Would I like to grow in this area?  Yes

This is one thing I have loved about the Writing Project.  Learning... thinking...and writing through the process. Discovering me, not only as a teacher but, also, as a writer.

I'm Becoming One of My Students!

As we look ahead to documenting our summer in the UNCC Writing Project, we are looking at the Teacher as a Writer, a Leader, and an Inquirer.  We have divided into three groups and are instructed to brainstorm what we need to make this "documentary" happen.  What is the "stuff" we need?  Pictures?  Video?  Also, we need to discuss style ideas.

As we are instucted to do this, I wonder...
How many points?  What should it look like?  What font size? When is it due? Is this for a grade?

Learning to Write

As a child, I hated writing.  Fact of the matter, I was never taught to write.  It was not until I learned how to teach writing that I learned to write and became a writer!

Below is a timeline about me as a writer, or perhaps at times, not being a writer.

The History of My Writing on Dipity.

What If....

What if we abandoned all rules?  What if there was no lined paper?  No rubrics? No specific prompts?
What if students could read what they want? Read how they want? No left to right....no top to bottom?
Would students be able to take risks because they wouldn't be wrong?

Yes, and yesterday, as we wrote into the day, Steven Johnson visualized how creativity and ideas come to be.  With no teacher restraints, would students develop hunches?  Would they explore them?



Yes, and Lacy made us think in her presentation, "Where Words Go," about this as we explored the lined paper society pushed upon schoolchildren as we teach them to write.  It was a totally out-of-the-box way of thinking.  It was the thinking that we would love to instill in our students.

Yes, and how do our "rules" impact student creativity?

Yes, and what if we abandoned rules and gave students a trusted writing community? What if students develop bonds and trust with a few fellow classmates who reflect and give non-judgemental feedback as Cindy and Steve describe in their "Peer Writing Groups" presentation?

Yes, and what if we try something new as teachers, just as we encourage our students to do in our classrooms?

Yes, and what if...?

UNCC Writing Project

For the next few weeks, I will be participating in the UNCC Writing Project....something I have been wanting to do for several years. We got started this past week with activities we can use with our classes:  Writing Timeline, Mapping Childhood Home/Community,  Murray Cards,  and Mentor Texts.

Mapping the Classroom and the School was a great self-reflection  activity that I would like to do with my English department.  As I mapped where student writing goes after the students finish a piece, I  realized that I could expand the ways students publish their writings to make their writing more authentic.

I am very intrigued with 21st century literacy, so I am thinking about using this topic for my Demonstation and Inquiry. My passion with the topic began a while back as I was reading an article in which the author said that in order to teach 21st century learners, we must speak their language.

Below is an example of  21st century literacy that can be used in classrooms.  It is an Xtranormal video that I made about the Writing Project. Xtranormal is neat digital storytelling site. Kids love writing scripts and making these robotic movies!

Writing Project

by: debbie.biggers

So,  this week, I will be working on my self-selected writing piece (about me), a digital timeline about me as a writer, a book review, my inquiry, and my demonstration.  I was told this week that Peter Elbow says that writers should work on multiple pieces of writing at the same time, and one can give inspiration to another....I hope he is right!