A Room With a View

This spring, I had the good fortune to read E.M. Forster's classic A Room with a View back-to-back with Donalynn Miller's Reading in the Wild.  I was struck by how much reading provides me with the travel - across both time and space - that I wish I could do in reality.  
I've always had a room with a view, even in my grad school off-campus apartment.  I only needed to open a book, and my view of the back-alley Dumpsters was replaced by Buttercup's farm in Florin.

Toward the end of the school year, I took a page out of Reading in the Wild and had my kids log their reading for a solid week.  Not what books they read, but their locations while reading.  The point of this was to have a discussion about our reading habits as we approached the summer break.  

This "room" definitely has a view!

Many of my kids had special book nooks that included "exotic" locations such as:

• under the covers with a flashlight
• under the bed with a flashlight
• the space between the bed and the wall with a flashlight (flashlights were very big with this class)
• in a bathtub filled with pillows and blankets instead of water, because it's the most private place in the house
• in a tent on a camping trip
• in the backseat of the car on a road trip

I don't think it's a coincidence that the "book nook" kids were also the kids who read the most books this year.  Some students realized that they only read at school - and that's a big problem when you're heading into summer break and you've already set your Summer Reading Goal.

Readers need a place to read, we discovered.  As part of this exercise, we helped our classmates find places to read within their own homes.  And I think, for many kids, that kind of planning is important.  Those are the kids who aren't going to read simply because they don't think even to read in the first place.  

If you've got a reading spot - a special little nook all set up just for reading - you're much more likely to <gasp> read!  The comfier, the better.  My kiddos had the best time planning the logistics of tight spaces and pillows, away from the prying eyes of siblings.

As a result of these chats, I fervently hope that some of the "nonreaders" will actually accomplish their Summer Reading Goals.

And me?  I filled in a log as well, and found that I'm a bubble bath / in bed kind of a reader.  But not to be outdone by the plans of my students, I am now the proud owner of a hammock.  My Boy Scout son helped me stretch it in between two ash trees in the back yard under some twinkle lights

Suddenly, my summer "travels" got a lot more cozy!  It's a big step up from Dumpster Alley!

Summer Reading Bingo with a Freebie

There really should be a hashtag for Ideas I Wish I Had Before the Last Day of School, But Now We're Two Days Into Summer Break So It's Really Too Late.  I bet a lot of Twitter Teachers would use it.  But it just seems too unwieldy and would take up almost an entire Tweet.  

The 5th graders and I made a list of our favorite books from this school year.  (Actually, it was two lists, since once piece of chart paper wasn't enough.)  Then, we put up a poster outside the room with our summer reading goals.  

I just wish, in the 2 class sessions we spent on this, I had thought to turn our goals into a game.  Unfortunately, I've already turned in my keys for the school year, and the parents probably wouldn't appreciate dropping their kids off for one more last day of school, anyway.

Or maybe they would.  I don't know.   

Either way, I've decided to turn summer reading into a bingo game for my own children at home.  Our kids have a 10 week summer, so the card has 9 squares.  If they go for blackout, that's a book a week.  Our kids are going into 6th and 9th grades, so naturally they'll be aiming for chapter books.  

Hubby and I have decided to offer prizes.  Yeah, I've read all that stuff about intrinsic vs. extrinsic motivation.  I even believe in it to a large extent.  However, it's summer and we're allowed to have some fun.  

Plus, I read over 30 books during the summer of 1984 just because our county library was offering bronze, silver and gold medal stickers in honor of the LA Summer Olympics.  And I really wanted that gold medal sticker.  It was my first memory of a library summer reading program, and it really helped spark my love of reading.  In that case, an extrinsic award helped strengthen an intrinsic motivation.  

If you like the idea of a Summer Reading Bingo Card, you can make up one of your own, or you can use mine.  Happy reading!  

Click here for the FREE Summer Reading Bingo Card!