So far, much of our time together has been devoted to developing good classroom habits. These habits include: getting to know each other, talking about books and reading in productive and valuable ways, and talking/listening/responding to each other. Not only are these habits that will support students throughout their lives, they will also give us a solid foundation of respect and trust in the classroom.
Students are also developing the habit of documenting their reading. They do this by filling out and index card for each book read. The index cards will serve as each class' measure of their reading as well as a motivator. Students also record finished books on an individual Reading List, which will, over time, provide data about reading stamina, genres preferred, and level of challenge in books chosen.
Most recently, we have been working on the classroom habit of "making our thinking public." The work we do as readers and thinkers is invisible and silent. If it stays that way, we can't help, challenge, or support each other. So we need to find and use ways to make our thinking public in the classroom. We'll do this by sharing our thinking aloud when we are reading a text together, and students will do this by marking the text when they are reading independently.
