Choosing Books

Choice is important!
Here is an excerpt from my literature review about choice:

Linda Grambrell (1996) said, “when children told us about both narrative and information books they ‘most enjoyed’ reading, over eighty percent responded they had self-selected the books from the classroom libraries” (p. 21). One huge component of The Daily Five is allowing students to make their own choices about not only what they choose to read, but which activity they choose to do during each rotation. According to Boushey and Moser (2006), “choice is highly motivational and puts children in charge of their learning” ( p. 20).  Through my research, I found several ways of teaching students how to choose a good book to read. My favorite method was presented both in the Boushey and Moser text (2006) and Williams, Hendrick, and Tuschinski’s article (2008). Both sources present a method called IPICK. In the IPICK method, students should know their purpose for reading, make sure the book they choose interests them, they are comprehending the text, and they know the words in the text. As a teacher, it is hard to give up control in my classroom. However, after researching, I can see the benefits of giving up my control and allowing my students the opportunity to make choices about their learning. Allowing students to make choices could make huge improvements in the amount of work, quality of work, and the engagement in my classroom.

Here is a picture of my classroom library!

 

 

I have tons of books that have been sorted by category, author, or level. The students choose books from the library to read during read to self and read to buddy time.

Obviously, kids cannot be going back and forth between the library and thier reading spot. So I stole a teambates idea and got each kid a  "book bin" to store thier books in.

They look like this:

Each kid is allowed to have 6 books in thier bin to choose from at a time! (Please ignore the names... I wll figure out from someone more technologically savvy how to blur them)

How do they choose a book? This strategy was intentionally taught to my students. Hopfeully they use it! They use this strategy in the library as well :)

When do they get to choose a book? Well we certainly wouldn't want to call it choosing books. That doesn't sound very fun! In our classroom we call it shopping for books! How exciting! Each child has an assigned day to shop each week so they do not flood the library at once to get new books.

Here is how it is posted in my classroom!

 

 

Boushey, G., Moser, J. (2006). The daily five: Fostering literacy independence in the elementary

 Grades. Portland, ME: Stenhouse Publishers.

Gambrell, L.B. (1996). Creating classroom cultures that foster reading motivation. The Reading

Teacher, 40 (1), 14-25.