Some Pinewood staff members and myself just returned from a great two-day conference, called nErDcamp. It was a very fun event that brought together over one thousand educators from all across the Mid-West. The conference focus was on literacy.
We met many great authors like Donalyn Miller, many children’s booth authors were there and participating like Laurie Keller. The conference reminded me of some of the most important foundations in strong reading instruction.
We want students to READ every day. We don’t care what they are reading; novels, children’s books, online news articles, graphic novels (comic books), the ever popular mindcraft books. Part of developing strong and life long readers is letting them have a voice and choice in their reading selection. If your student keeps reading the same series of books, or visiting the same online site it doesn’t matter if they are loving what they are reading. We hope they don’t see reading as a chore and if they do please let us know we can help find some other books or resources that will hopefully spark their interest.
I love the Scholastic website and having students log their minutes because it is a way for me to gauge if our students are reading. For my own children seeing their minutes grown and reading the new unlocked stories are motivators for them. If that doesn’t motivate your child and you prefer to write down reading minutes that is completely fine. If you don’t even want to write minutes but your child can write a list of books they have read or online article topics they remember, that is fine too. The only thing that really matter is that they are reading.
