Books that kids want to read

The article, Flood Insurance: When Children Have Books They Can and Want to Read discusses the importance of having a classroom library that is interesting and engaging to the students in your classroom. Jo Worthy and Nancy Roser give a list of 7 criteria that should be included when creating your classroom library:

Books should be......

1. Interesting to kids (stuff they want to read)
2. Culturally relevant
3. Age appropriate
4. At appropriate level of the reader
5. Time should be given to kids to read
6. Students should be given strategies on what good readers do
7. Library should contain a variety of texts
8. Time should be given to students to discuss texts they are reading

The study that this article is based on uses what is called a book flood. I am sure you are thinking the exact same thing I was thinking when I read this article: what the heck is a book flood??? A book flood is an intervention where a huge amount of texts are incorporated into the classroom for reading sake. According to one study, Elley discovered that, "the evidence is now strong that it is possible to double the rate of reading acquisition......with a "book flood" of 100 high-interest books per class and short teacher training sessions."

One of the ways that researchers discovered what students preferred to read was by interviewing them. However, this was not the only measure used. Researchers observed students directly and made notations on what students were reading and why they picked that book. Most notably, kids enjoyed reading scary books, picture books, and books written in two different language.

Something that hit home with me when I was reading this article was the discussion on having appropriate books in your library. In this study, students in the classroom could decode, but had problems in the area of comprehension. When the teacher analyzed the books in the classroom library prior to the book flood, it was discovered that 80% of the books were above the reading level of most of the students in the classroom! After reading this, I was prompted to look at my library and realized I had many books above the level of some of the students in my classroom.

One of the ways that reading was facillitated in this classroom was through daily read alouds and guided reading instruction. Additionally, students had time to read alone and had instruction on decoding, vocabulary, comprehension, genres, and writer's craft. There was also time to share with peers and students in this study even wrote to the author of Esperanza Rising!

Students in this study also took on the art of re-reading. They would often draw out scenes from books that were re-read, present scenes in dramas, and one student even claimed he wanted to re-read just to see if he could make his voice sound like the teacher's!

The idea of finding appropriate books in your classroom library seems like such a no-brainer. Yet, for many (myself included), we often do not take the time to analyze our library. Thanks to this study and article, I know I will be more critical in deciding what goes on the shelf in my classroom library.

Here is the article:
http://www.learner.org/workshops/teachreading35/pdf/flood_ensurance.pdf