I Must Be Doing Something Right

The last grading period this semester my students participated in book groups. They used Edmodo to converse with students in other classes and completed imaginative response projects as a way to respond to their reading. In my morning classes, many of the students finished their novels well before the end of the grading period. Because they're writing me book notes, and it is a reading class after all, they were/are still required to read during full-class SSR.

Of the 15 students in my first period class, 8 are reading books I've either started during a read-aloud, or books that they've seen me read over the course of the semester. Two of those eight students asked me specifically for a book they saw me read that they found interesting. One of the kids saw one of my reader response projects and asked me to explain. I told him to read the book to figure out what it meant, and he did.

All of this is to say there is power in reading aloud to middle school students. There is power in doing book talks with reluctant readers. There is power in completing and displaying the projects you ask students to complete. There is power in modeling silent reading and entertaining the questions they ask about your book. They're NOT always stalling. And teachers shouldn't listen to instructional leaders who say that middle school students shouldn't be read to.

Some of the books I've read this semester that students picked up:

• Sleeping Freshmen Never Lie by David Lubar
• Looking for Alaska by John Green
• Unwind by Neal Shusterman
• The Schwa Was Here by Neal Shusterman
• Tears of a Tiger by Sharon Draper
• The Lightning Thief by Rick Riordan
• The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie
• ttyl by Lauren Myracle
• Full Tilt by Neal Shusterman
• Twisted by Laurie Halse Anderson

On Read-Alouds

I'm not sure I have a blog roll on my blog anymore, especially since the blogs I follow all run through my Google Reader, but I read this post on The Reading Zone, and had to share.

One of the strategies I started using this year to get my students interested in stories is the read-aloud. I had a novel that I read aloud to the class when we'd have extra time at the end of the period. The only one we got to this year was Dreadlocks by Neal Shusterman, but I already have a list lined up for the fall, including Sherman Alexie's The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, Sharon G. Flake's The Skin I'm In, and Richard Wright's Rite of Passage. I might pull in some more Shusterman, but I haven't decided yet. Hopefully, the book talks I'm planning to put into my weekly podcast will help me and the students decide what I should read to them--what will get them interested in reading the most.

My favorite book off of her list has to be The Giver by Lois Lowry. I recently finished the third in the series, called Messenger. Fantastic. I should have blogged about it, but I think it's one of the novels I read recently that has yet to make it up here.

One aspect of TheReadingZone's post that I particularly liked was her students' comments on their novels. She mentions that she has students read a variety of genres, authors, etc. so at least something resonates with each of her students. What I like even more was that she has them register an opinion. I want to take a page out of her book.

The List of novels (and only the novels) I'm considering for my 8th graders (they'll get to choose)

• The Giver by Lois Lowry (of course -- and I might teach this full class instead of small group)
• Number the Stars by Lois Lowry
  
• Hatchet by Gary Paulsen
• Bad Boy: A Memoir by Walter Dean Myers
• Tangerine by Edward Bloor
• That Was Then, This Is Now by S. E. Hinton

I think there might be more on that list, but I can't remember off the top of my head.

On Sherman Alexie's The Absolutely True Diary of a Part Time Indian

I was looking for a read-aloud book for my Self-Identity unit in the fall, and really, I don't have to look any farther than The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian. I read this novel on recommendation from one of my buddies who read it in a class a couple of semesters ago. I didn't have time to read it then, so I knocked it out yesterday.

The novel is told in first person by a Spokane Indian, Arnold Spirit, Jr. Arnold decides that he is going to go to the white school about 22 miles up the road rather than continue to attend the school on the reservation. He is the only Indian at the school, and is the recipient of some animosity because they don't know what to expect from him. He has some troubles getting to school, which he cartoons about, his best friend hates him for leaving the reservation, people close to him die, and he joins the basketball team.

I could identify with Junior in that his peers called him an apple--red on the outside, white on the inside--because if an Indian wants to make something of him/herself, he says, then they're considered white. When I was a kid, my cousins called me oreo, black on the outside white on the inside.

The novel discusses how difficult it is to fit in, especially when what you want is outside the norm.

I'm excited to say that this title is soon to be on the shelf in my school library.

Alexie, Sherman. The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian. New York: Little Brown, 2007.