Readers Read

     There are so many, many things I took away from my conference with Donalyn Miller on Monday.  The 6 sketch notes below (made with the Paper 53 app) show her wisdom, and some of my reflections on it.

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    When you walk away with a lot of new and inspiring things, sometimes you have to stop and ask yourself what the BIGGEST take away was.  So, I spent the drive home thinking about it, and then the drive to work today thinking about it, and then it hit me.  

Readers read.
Teachers are readers.
We need to read, too.

     OK, I already knew that.  But, did I LIVE it?

     It sounds simple.  Read.  But, it isn't that easy in the day to day world of the classroom.   It is so easy for the Lead Reader (aka the Teacher) to not read, but rather to support readers.  But, it's those read alouds, and those conversations with students in groups around a book that we have *actually* read, that makes us readers too.  It's the books we read personally for fun, and the books we read to learn, that remind us what real readers actually do.  And, it's the love of reading that we bring to the classrooms where we teach.

     Teachers need to read, and love reading.

     They need to see us as readers, blessing titles for the class.

     They need us to really KNOW books, so that we can match books to OUR readers.

     We need to read.

     I came to this realization, of course, watching Donalyn talk about all the books that mentioned yesterday.  For every lesson she could possibly teach, she can name a book to teach it with.  Honestly, that is a strength of mine as well.  But, when Donalyn starting talking about sets of texts, with true knowledge of the craft and author's purpose of each, I knew that I needed to get better.  And I now have an Amazon cart FULL of books waiting for me to explore.

     So, here's the challenge.  In my pursuit of elaborating upon my list of great texts, let's build it together.  Hiawatha, let's unite in the sharing of books and text that we love!!!  If you read a book to your class, or if you as a reader finish a book, or if a student recommends a book to you, tweet about it using #HiawathaReads.  You can include the focus strategy you used, or just simply share a great title worth sharing.  Either way, let's use Twitter for the targeted purpose of growing our list of books we love.

     Here's an example!

      The best part?  You could see that tweet and walk down the hall and ask Lori Horne to borrow the book!  Or, if someone reads a book and tweets about it, you could invite them to your class to do a quick book talk!  Or, you could invite them in to be a guest reader!   Can you just imagine the possibilities that #HiawathaReads could bring?

     My goal, this year and last, has been to read the books our Hiawatha students read.  Perhaps I need to expand that goal to finding new books to share as well.  Let's read books that we love, and model for our students the joy that literacy can bring!

#HiawathaReads    #HiawathaPride

 ***If you are not from Hiawatha, please share titles with us too!!!

If you are interested in reading more about Donalyn Miller and her book Reading in the Wild, check out this post here.  It will take you to our district blog book study.