Passionate Reading

Here’s my blog post about my passion for reading that was on Kirby Larson’s blog at the beginning of this week:

You’ll have to excuse it if it looks funny-  I copied and pasted it from a google document where I had typed it up to share with her. 🙂

Passionate About Reading

 

Passion can be love or hate because it’s any powerful feeling you have about something. The dictionary defines it as:

pas·sion

 [pash-uhn]  Show IPA

noun

1.

any powerful or compelling emotion or feeling, as love or hate.

2.

strong amorous feeling or desire; love; ardor.

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/passion

 

Most of us are passionate about something: God, family, animals, eating, exercising, sports, television, reading, shopping….

 

One of my passions is reading. It always has been. Sure I’ve had lulls in my reading life, especially during my teen years, but it’s always resurfaced. Passion doesn’t die in some cases- it just becomes dormant until a spark reignites it.

 

I became a reader at the ripe age of FOUR. See, on Sunday afternoons after church a quiet peace would settle in our house as everyone read something. A book. A newspaper. Whatever. Since I couldn’t read, I’ve been told that I would whine, fuss, complain, and cry that IT JUST WASN’T FAIR. WHY DOES EVERYONE ELSE GET TO READ AND I CAN’T???????? These little tantrums worked. I was enrolled by my mom, an avid reader, in kindergarten a whole year early. Insert smile and happy dance here!!!

 

So for 2 years, I attended kindergarten and learned to read. Dick and Jane were 2 of my closest childhood friends. And I’ve had many, many, many book friends since then.

 

As a teacher of readers, I want my students to see me as a reader. I want them to see my passion for reading. So what do I do to make my passion for reading visible? I talk the talk and walk the walk. At the beginning of the year, I challenge all of them to read more books than me for the school year. I like to throw that in there! The first few days of reading workshop I read while they read. I bring my current book to school. I talk about my love of books. I talk about the books I’ve loved. I talk about my relationship with my book characters. During our daily read aloud, I let them see my connection to these characters in the way I read, the way I laugh, and sometimes the way I cry. I ask them what they are reading. I ask them how they like what they are reading. I ask them about their reading.

 

 

This year I even tried something new- My Book Door. How much more visible could I get?

My students can see at a glance WHAT I’ve read and HOW MUCH I’ve read. And how much more I’ve read than them. Wink-wink!

 

I only hope that this passion I have for reading has some kind of influence on the readers in my classroom: the avid readers, the reluctant readers, the non-readers. If my reading passion touches them in any positive way, then I will feel successful as a teacher of these very young and oh, so impressionable readers.

 

By the way, WHAT ARE YOU READING?

 

Shannon

Lover of reading

 

 

Shannon Clark

Wife to 1 husband

Mother of 3 children

Owner of 7 dogs, many horses, cows, and donkeys

6th grade teacher, B.A. in criminal justice, Master’s in childhood education, ED.S. in elementary education, ponders quite often about becoming a NBCT

Alabama country girl who loves to drive a tractor

Lover of running, reading, teaching

I blog at http://www.irunreadteach.wordpress.com

Passionate Reading

Kirby Larson, author of Hattie Big Sky, allowed me to be one of her guest bloggers!!!!! Yippee!!!

Here’s a link to my blog post:http://kirbyslane.blogspot.com/2014/03/from-office-of-future-of-reading_25.html?m=1

At the moment I’m on spring break and passionately reading The Left Behind Series! 🙂

Hot Mess

Here’s a picture that helps to explain why my blog posts have been few and far between lately!

I. Can’t. Get. Caught. Up.

Anyone else out there feel this way? 🙂

Reading Marathon

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

In celebration of Dr. Seuss and Read Across America week we had our own little reading marathon Friday. Most of the day was spent reading, but I threw in a couple of other activities.

This is a picture of our note pass. They each wrote a paragraph about the book they were reading. Then we passed it to the person on the right. They read and commented. Repeat. Simple but fun and engaging!

We did a book pass, too. I’ve done this in the past with 2 other classes. Everyone has a book (that I pick out). 🙂 I tell them to start reading on page 1 for about 2 minutes. Stop and write the title down IF it’s a book you’re interested in reading. Pass to the person on the right. Repeat. In an ideal situation, they would be exposed to as many books as there are students. However, we ran out of time. BUT-only 2 students out of 14 said they didn’t find a book they were interested in. SUCCESS!

 

 

Of course, we had our normal read aloud. We are currently reading WONDER by R.J. Palacio. I have 6 boys who say it’s boring so any ideas you can throw my way to get them into it…… 🙂 I think that next week I’m going to have them send Auggie a “text” before he starts school. 🙂

They had to pay attention while they were reading (don’t we always want them to do that????) and lift a line our of their book. One that spoke to their heart, one that they loved the way it sounds, etc. Anything they wanted to choose. Here’s our chart:

 

It was a great day!!!

The only drawback was that one student didn’t come to school. That student stayed out because ALL WE WERE GOING TO DO WAS READ.

Sigh.

I guess that student doesn’t think any learning is going on when that happens. JUST when I start to feel successful….

🙂