This past weekend, a former colleague and friend of mine started a conversation on Facebook about reading logs and alternatives for keeping track of students' reading and reading in general. As many of you know, I am a big fan of reader's notebooks since reading Donalyn Miller's The Book Whisperer a couple of years ago. Since then I have had at least one new notebook each year, at times an additional and separate journal for my summer reading (and writing). So, I decided to make this second summer reading blog post (click here if you missed the first one) about reader's notebooks (thanks, Erin, for the great conversation and inspiration :)
This coming week I will meet with all of our students one last time before the end of the school year to talk about summer reading. Remembering our conversations of past years, I know that there will be no shortage of comments from our students why summer reading matters. Not only do our students know that to maintain and further develop the reading skills they acquired during the school year, they need to continue reading. Our students always point out that reading makes long journeys more fun, keeps you entertained on rainy days, let's you travel to faraway places, even if you are not going anywhere right now, and is simply one of the nicest ways to spend time with people we care about. Summer is the perfect time for reading together, with family and friends, having more time to enjoy and treasure read-alouds. There are so many wonderful books out there that are even more enjoyed when they are shared and discussed with other readers (I will make some specific recommendations in next Monday's blog post). In this context, I will also suggest and introduce keeping a summer reader's journal/notebook/scrapbook.
So back to the reader's notebook - or what could become your summer reader's scrapbook, journal, keepsake of a very special time. There are no rules about what it should look like and what should go into it. It is whatever works best for you. There are no limits set to your creativity and imagination. Here are just a few ideas from my own reader's notebooks, you might like to consider:
I would love to see your notebooks after the summer. Will you show them to me?
- It's most fun when you get to choose your own notebook because you really feel it's yours right from the start.
- You can keep one as a family or let everyone have their own.
- Keep some kind of a tally about the different genres or generally the different kinds of books you read.
- Record all the books you read. I usually do that by writing down the date I finished the book, the title, the author, favorite quotes and any other responses I have to the book. Sometimes this response is what I liked about the book (and what I didn't). But there are so many other ways to respond: making a picture of a favorite scene, drawing an advertisement poster for the book, recommending the book to someone, writing a letter to the author or one of the protagonists, just to add a few more examples.
- If you like to make it more of a scrapbook, add bits and pieces from your travels, from the place you read the book at. Maybe you have a plane ticket, a train ticket, a postcard or a picture of the place to add for example.
- I like to use different colored pens so that I can easily find things when I am looking through the notebook ( a trick I learned from the wonderful author Lenore Look); for example I write all quotes in a particular color.
I would love to see your notebooks after the summer. Will you show them to me?
Happy summer reading, journaling and scrapbooking!
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