The Book Whisperer

The Book Whisperer: Awakening the Inner Reader in Every Child by Donalyn Miller

When we have really personalised programmes in our classroom one of the things that can disappear is reading, and developing the love of reading. Many of the points Ive highlighted still refer to a whole class teaching “American” approach. But its one of the things Matt and I always knew was missing from our progamme back in the day- recreational reading and developing a pure joy of reading for recreation. We knew most of our kids got it from home so we never figured out a classroom solution.

 I think we need to at TK. I don’t think this has been done at all well in the middle years in the last three years- and thats mostly coz I haven’t figured out a way to do it authentically on an individual basis. 

This book has really made me start figuring that out. Its important, really important.

When I need to forget the world I lose myself in a book. We need to give these kids that skill too.

 A trail of worksheets from a teacher to their students does not build a connection with readers; only books do.198   

Books are love letters (or apologies) passed between us, adding a layer of conversation beyond our spoken words. 243   

 I could tell they were not emotionally or intellectually getting much from the book. They were robots, trudging through the unit and completing the assigned activities. Reading was work, another job to finish in the daily grind of school.281  

And thats not going to inspire life long reading as a habit.

Even with her extensive knowledge of reading and writing practices, Susie was always searching for methods to improve the literacy instruction in her classroom and still struggling to get it “right.” Susie lives by the credo “If you ever think you have all the answers, it’s time to retire.” 316

So, so true.

I learned that being the best reader and writer in the room is not about power and control. Instead, I must be a source of knowledge that my students access while learning how to read and write. Instead of standing on stage each day, dispensing knowledge to my young charges, I should guide them as they approach their own understandings. Meaning from a text should not flow from my perceptions or, God forbid, the teaching guide; it should flow from my students’ own understandings, under my guidance.333

Which means lots of talking about reading, rather than generic worksheets.

Peeking into my classroom, I see sixty different readers with individual reading preferences and abilities, but I consistently recognize three trends: developing readers, dormant readers, and underground readers.433

Students who don’t read, even if they are capable of completing reading tasks at school, run the risk of falling behind students who read more than they do. 508

Underground readers are gifted readers, but they see the reading they are asked to do in school as completely disconnected from the reading they prefer to do on their own. 523

Ngahuia, Antarge, Te Hurutea, Kirsteen, all come to mind as kids Ive taught like this in the last couple of years.

Is there one of us who is not haunted by the memory of a child we failed? 548

This always makes me think of Sam. I taught her for Year 5-6 and Yr 8, and I was her parents, but I cold never get her reading. I read ot her her whole life, she moved through the colour wheel ahead of her age I bought her books, but from the age of 8 or 9 I oculd never get her into a book. I don’t think she ever finished reading a book right through her teens. But then all of  sudden when she was 19-20 she got into really heavy existential philosophical books and always has one of them she's reading now. But she does not enjoy or do recreational “fiction” reading in any way.

Brian Cambourne identifies the following factors that contribute to successful learning: • Immersion: Students need to be surrounded with books of all kinds and given the opportunity to read them every day. Conversations about reading—what is being read and what students are getting from their books—need to be an ongoing event. In my classroom, students have access to hundreds of books of all genres and reading levels and encouragement to read widely. 

• Demonstrations: Students require abundant demonstrations on the structure and features of texts, how to use texts for different learning goals, and how to access the information in them. I teach daily reading lessons using authentic texts like books, articles, and textbooks, designing every lesson around the skills that readers really need to develop reading proficiency. 
• Expectations: Students will rise to the level of a teacher’s expectations. I expect my students to read every day and to read a large volume of books. Not only do I have high expectations for reading, I have high expectations for students’ success. They are never given messages, either explicitly or implicitly, that I do not think they can accomplish any reading task. 
• • Responsibility: Students need to make at least some of their own choices when pursuing learning goals. 
• Cambourne states, “Learners who lose the ability to make choices become disempowered.” I set reading requirements for my students at a certain number of books per genre, but students have the freedom to choose which books they will read in order to fulfill the requirements. 
• Employment: Students need time to practice what they are learning in the context of realistic situations. Every single lesson that I teach circles back to students’ own reading, and students are given time daily to apply the skills they acquire to their own books, content-area reading, and research assignments. 
• Approximations: Students need to receive encouragement for the skills and knowledge they do have and be allowed to make mistakes as they work toward mastery. I help students find books that are at their own reading level, even if it is below grade level, and publicly celebrate each reader’s accomplishments as he or she moves toward more mature reading ability. 
• Response: Students need nonthreatening, immediate feedback on their progress. By holding frequent conferences, requiring written response letters about their books, and discussing students’ reading with them daily, I am continually providing encouragement, guidance, and validation for their reading development. 

• Engagement: Even with all of the other

conditions in place, engagement is the most important condition for learning and must exist in a successful classroom.613

used to use these a lot. Had kind of forgotten about them. They are good.

I no longer spend the majority of my planning time crafting those glorious novel units. Instead, I focus my efforts on designing a classroom environment that engages my students, based on Cambourne’s conditions for learning.624

Students must believe that they can read and that reading is worth learning how to do well.627

 if I do not make time for them to read in school, why should they make time for it in their life? 706

I never saw this as that important at Hataitai because the kids all read out of school, but I can see that thinking has come with me and I need to get rid of it, because these kids need to see how important reading is and we need to make time for them to do it in the classroom. Thats quite a change of thinking for me.

Student learning—reading, writing, and thinking—should continue from the first bell until the last.

While we teachers decry the lack of time we have to teach, it seems that we misappropriate a great deal of what we do have on classroom chores and mindless work.806

Hopefully personalising timetables gets rid of a lot of the wasted time. I still  see some of our teachers doing real time wasters though like lining up and having everyone on the mat because one or two kids have done something wrong. Gotta get that practice stopped.

I know that the more time students spend reading each day, the more ingrained it becomes as a daily habit.838

The time to read is any time: no apparatus, no appointment of time and place, is necessary. It is the only art which can be practised at any hour of the day or night, whenever the time and inclination comes, that is your time for reading; in joy or sorrow, health or illness. —Holbrook Jackson904

Building a trusting relationship with students is easier when you expect them to do the right thing instead of assuming that they are not.972

Really believe this. Struggling to get it through to some staff though!

FORTY-BOOK REQUIREMENT Poetry anthologies 5 Traditional literature 5 Realistic fiction 5 Historical fiction 2 Fantasy 4 Science fiction 2 Mystery 2 Informational 4 Biography, autobiography, 1121

American but we could work on an adaptation

What we must do is give our approval when students make their own reading choices, no matter what books they choose, because this is far preferable to their deciding not to read at all. Especially with boys,

What draws middle school and high school boys to the edgy themes of certain movies and video games, the visceral imagery, the suggestive scenes, the subversive tone can be found in young adult books; they just don’t know it.1241

READ -ALOUD FAVORITES Fiction ELEMENTARY Each Little Bird That Sings, by Deborah Wiles The Sixth Grade Nickname Game, by Gordon Korman The SOS Files, by Betsy Byars The Word Eater, by Mary Amato INTERMEDIATE The Beasties, by William Sleator The Underneath, by Kathi Appelt The Schwa Was Here, by Neal Shusterman Seedfolks, by Paul Fleischman The Lightning Thief, by Rick Riordan 

Memoirs ELEMENTARY Guts, by Gary Paulsen Knots in My Yo-Yo String, by Jerry Spinelli The Tarantula in My Purse, by Jean Craighead George INTERMEDIATE My Life in Dog Years, by Gary Paulsen Small Steps: The Year I Got Polio, by Peg Kehret How Angel Peterson Got His Name, by Gary Paulsen 1280

Because every student in my classroom is reading her or her own book, I must converse with each of them in order to determine their progress toward reading goals and give them the individual support they need. 1370

Individual conferencing the key.

The reader’s notebook we use, a customized version of Fountas and Pinnell’s Guiding Readers and Writers (Grades 3-6), is a seventy-page spiral notebook with photocopies of charts and lists trimmed and glued into the front.

Tally list: This page is divided into columns for the genres and number of titles I require students to read. Students tally the books they have read as they go, and I sign off on any genre requirements that they complete. • Reading list: This list is where students record all of the books they have read or attempted and abandoned. Each book’s entry includes the title, author, date the book was finished, and the student’s assessment of how difficult the book was to read. • Books-to-read list: This list serves as a shopping list or plan for a student’s future reading. Students record sequels that are yet to be published, books recommended by peers or me, or books that they have previewed and want to read later. • Response entries: The majority of the reader’s notebook is dedicated to response entries. The focus of these letters is aesthetic; students reflect on their personal reactions to the books they read and on the authors’ writing. I write letters that respond back, asking questions and digging into students’ interpretations and appreciation of their books. 1378

When we meet for conferences, I expect students to bring their notebook so we can look at it together and talk about it. 1393

Again American, but we could adapt.

Readers are made, not born. Few students spring out of the ground fully formed as readers. They need help, and we cannot assume that they will get it from home, but they should always get it from us, 1502

So it needs to be a deliberate part of our planning?

When my principal interviews candidates for a teaching position at my school, regardless of whether it’s a language arts position, he always asks them to discuss the last book they read.1525

Hmm, interesing idea

In taking a look at your self-reflection responses, what have you learned about yourself as a reader? Is reading just a tool to access information and be successful in school and work, or is it also a pleasurable escape for you?  1533

SELF-REFLECTION ACTIVITY What were your reading experiences as a child? Were these positive or negative experiences for you? Do you see yourself as a reader

now? How do you share your reading experiences—both current experiences and those from the past—with your students? With which group of readers in your classroom do you most identify—the underground readers, the developing readers, or the dormant readers? Who have been your role models for reading? List the last five books you have read. How long did it take for you to read these books? 1547

Hadnt read in 3 weeks, but when I realised that and just sat down and read Ive read three books in 3 days! As a kid I remember getting in trouble for sneaking off and hiding somewhere to read when we had visitors because it was ‘anti-social” I cant remember ever not reading, usually more than one book at a time. And on my kindle now Ive usually got 2 or 3 books on the go at the same time sand I flick between them.

Standing off to the side and telling students to read doesn’t work for most of them. How are they supposed to become readers if they don’t have any models to emulate? Remember that you are the best reader in the room, the master reader. Embrace that, and wear your reading love proudly in front of your students every day. The reality is that you cannot inspire others to do what you are not inspired to do yourself.1662

We live in a world of standardized testing. My students will eventually be expected to show the concepts and strategies that they have learned during my class on the Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills at the end of the year. I do not worry about this end goal much because I know that the amount of reading and response that my students do is the best preparation for this assessment. Frankly, the state’s goal is narrower than mine. The state assessment measures only a small number of the standards that the state prescribes that I teach. I want students to become life readers, people who read avidly.1851

What a goal!

BOOK REVIEW CRITERIA • Quotes from the book • Quotes from famous writers and reviewers • Cliffhanger questions • Personal reactions and opinions • Awards the book and author have won • Recommended reading

age • Other books by the same author • Comparisons with other books, 1938

Again American, but some potential possibilities here.

Poor readers dread getting called on to read, and good readers are bored by laboring through the reading of slower, less capable readers than themselves. Round-robin reading does nothing to foster a feeling of reading success in any but the best readers, and it doesn’t build anyone’s oral reading ability or fluency, either.2066

It is important for students to practice reading aloud in order to develop confidence and fluent oral reading ability, so how can we encourage students to read aloud, but avoid the negatives of round-robin and popcorn reading?2070

????

Students will read if we give them the books, the time, and the enthusiastic encouragement to do so. If we make them wait for the one unit a year in which they are allowed to choose their own books to become readers, they may choose never to read at all. To keep our students reading, we have to let them. 

And that is going to need time in class.

Afterword READING IS FUNDAMENTAL. Growing up in the late 1960s and early 1970s, I heard these words on a public-service television spot, squeezed between my favorite TV shows, Bonanza and The Big Valley. Spoken by a young boy of ten or eleven—someone close to my age—those words were a call to action. I got the message that if I ever expected to know more about the world around me, I would need to read. 2419

Wow. I really enjoyed reading this and it has made me re think some things in the classroom, especially for these kids and what some of their goals should be around reading. Great food for thought as we start preparing for next year.