Amanda Justice Blog 3

Routman, Chapter 3:  Share Your Reading Life

“Sadly, reading for pleasure rarely comes up without some prodding.” 

This quote stuck with me as I read Share Your Reading Life by Routman.  In my own school experience I rarely remember the teacher discussing reading for pleasure.  I often recall reading because it was a part of the curriculum, but rarely reading because it was fun.  I think this is such an important message to send to our students.  While I believe this is important, I’m not sure how well I do with this myself.   I rarely share what I have read or am reading with my students.  I talk to them about the books we read aloud in our classroom and which books are my favorites, but I don’t know that I ever discuss what I read for pleasure outside of school.    

As I sat here typing this reflection, my son walked up to me and in amazement at the yellow highlights in my book.  He began questioning why I wrote in my book.  As I tried to explain to him, he said “I want you to read all the pages to me.”  This just goes to show that what we read as adults matters to our children and students.

This chapter discusses the idea of sharing your personal library with your students.  I love this idea and think that I can take this a step further by sharing my children’s personal libraries with my students as well.  I like what the author says about loving to own the books herself.  I too find joy in owning books that are special to me.  I have copies of my favorite books on my bookshelf at home and take pride in knowing that I have read these books or in the fact I intend to read some of them.  I feel as though our bookshelf shows a glimpse into our lives and who we are as people.  On our bookshelf you will find a books about rock stars, motor cross riders, education, health, prayer, Bibles, and much more.  We have a collection of books by Max Lucado and Lauren Conrad.  While this is only a glimpse of our collection of books, it tells a story about our family and the things we value and enjoy in life.  In the future I plan to share a photo of mine and Kyle’s library as well as our children’s libraries with my students.  I feel great excitement about the libraries we have built and can’t wait to share that excitement with my students.

The author additionally discusses respecting parents busy lives.  As a parent, I can definitely relate to this.  Both of my children’s teachers send home reading logs to track reading at home.  Riley’s teacher only asks you to write the title of the book and sign after 10 books.  Haley’s school asks you to write the date, title, number of pages read, and initial every day.  I do not mind filling out the reading log each night for my children but dread writing the page number on Haley’s reading log.  Many children’s books do not even include page numbers, which means when Haley reads a book I have to count the number of pages almost every time.  Sometimes she read 5-10 books in a night.  It seems to me that counting the number of pages in a book is pointless and just takes up my time.  The author states that these tasks can make reading become a chore, rather than something we do for pleasure.  I agree.  I believe that her idea of trusting our students to complete reading logs and to make these logs their own could help increase student desire to read at home.  So often we talk about students taking ownership of their work.  Allowing student’s ownership of their reading logs would be a great way to do this.  Not to mention it may encourage children whose parents will not sign to still read.  I believe we have to ask ourselves what our goal is with a reading log and what information is truly important to include?