VAASL Conference SSR and Secondary Students: Sharing Success Stories

Thank you to everyone who attended one of the SSR and Secondary Students sessions.  I enjoyed talking with you all and appreciate you posting your ideas, questions, etc on the poster boards on your way out.  Here are the posts from the Success Poster:

Success:

• Teachers make SSR the best with collaboration
• I genrefied the sports fiction and the boys have loved it
• one English teacher has their students sell their books (2 students at a time). The class votes on the winning book.
• Book pass- students choose books from a large selection. Read 3 minutes and move on to another one.  Go back to pick one you want to read.
• The Book Whisperer changed my whole view of teaching.  My students and I cherish our independent reading time- 20 minutes every day.
• One to one with individual non-readers
• Book talks
• Reading Zone- with 9 and 10 Academic classes.  They read every English class and come read for 1/2 hour each week in the library.  Reading scores went up!!
• We had school-wide SSR at my former school until the admin changed.  Everyone read.
• Loved the idea of the graffiti wall. May adapt it for my readers.

Recap:  

Thank you all for sharing your successes.  I love the book pass idea, what a great way to give kids access to lots of great books!  I am also a huge fan of The Book Whisperer, and in fact it was from Donalyn Miller's twitter account that I got the idea of using a graffiti wall for reading comments. I have not genrefied the fiction section of my school library.  I do a lot with genres and pull lots of genre displays though.  I have been a bit resistant to this idea because it is not clear cut what genre a book belongs in.  I do see the appeal to kids though and that is one of the key elements of successful SSR.  I would love for you all to comment on this topic!

Any other success stories?  These stories can be powerful indicators of the importance and power of reading!