| Over the past two weeks, students across the primary grades shared their reading wishes and goals for 2017. I love starting the year in this way, spending time with students to think about where we are as readers and what we wish for and want to work towards in the new year. Amy Krouse Rosenthal's beautiful book I Wish You More provided a wonderful introduction to this conversations; the perfect read-aloud for the first library visits of the year. Not only is it a perfect book to talk about wishes, it is also a wonderful resource to show especially our older readers that picture books have no age limit. It was beautiful hearing our Upper Primary students share their thinking about the writer's message for us. (A friend of mine had a beautiful personalized copy of the book made for me.) |  |
Our EC students mentioned in particular finding more books on favorite topics to read (at the top of the list are dinosaurs and other animals) as well as the wish that they had more reading time with a parent or sibling. Students who have begun to read more independently shared that they were hoping to be able to read books with more words on their own.
Our students in grades 3-5 analyzed their check out history, looking in particular at the variety of genres read, and reflected on their reading habits (i.e. self-selecting books, making time to read, sharing books with others readers, having preferences, and making reading plans) before setting goals for the second semester. Especially popular genres across grades are realistic fiction, fantasy, mystery and for some students also informational books. Often overlooked seem on the other hand traditional literature and poetry. Many students said they wanted to give one of these two genres a try and I promised to highlight examples of these during my weekly recommendations more frequently this semester. In the area of reading habits, students mentioned most frequently as their goal either making (more) time to read or making reading plans. We will talk about strategies that help in developing these habits in the course of the semester.
All in all, we all felt we learned something new about ourselves as readers, what we would like to achieve next as our reading journey continues as well as how we can support each other in this. I was especially excited to see some of our upper primary students taking action right away by checking out books they usually don't include in their selection.
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