The Book Whisperer

I finished this book! Thanks to an excessively long wait at Firestone [FOUR hours!] I read a lot of this book in one sitting (while fixing my car's brakes - yikes!). Thank goodness I brought a good book. Then, spring sprung on us! Can I get an AMEN? I am So. Over. Winter. Today it was 75 degrees and just absolutely beautiful. Y'all. The birds were chirping. I had the windows open. The sun was keeping my toes warm. It was heaven.

Back to the book. THE book. I'm sure you've heard of it. If you haven't read it, read it. I'm a wacko and love learning. I think if I wasn't a teacher, I would never leave college. But, you know, who has the money for that life? So now I read books to learn; here is what I learned from this one:

• CELEBRATE reading success!
• Students should pick the books they read and READ in class. 
• Free time (finishing work early) should almost ALWAYS be reading time!
• You can directly apply learning in task specific formats all you want, but students need time to APPLY what they learned in their own reading. 
• The rights of a reader. How have I NEVER heard of these?! This should be one of the FIRST things students hear upon entering the reading environment. I mean, I have these rights and act on them all the time (especially #2!). #1 is a biggie that's hard for me to accept, but sometimes we all have the right to NOT read and that right (however infrequent) should be extended to our students. 

• Students will only learn to love reading if they have a model of someone who loves reading. BE ENTHUSIASTIC IN EVERYTHING! (I'm crazy - but it's nice to hear someone tell me that is how I should be!)

There is, of course, so much more that I learned and activities I want to implement in the classroom. (FYI for when YOU read the book: chapter 6 is ALL ABOUT throwing away [or utilizing a lot less] the old "traditional" ways of teaching reading and trading them out for more effective and engaging teaching practices that are standards based and data driven.)

Now I'm off to read a book for fun before jumping into my next book study: Driven By Data by Paul Bambrick-Santoyo.