Book Talks

I recently finished reading Donalyn Miller's book The Book Whisperer. While I enjoyed reading the book immensely, many of the situations and results she presented seemed 'too good to be true'. I think that maybe if I was only a reading teacher as she is, I would have an easier time believing that I could achieve similar results. Unfortunately (or fortunately depending on which way you look at it), I teach all curriculum areas, and so I have to give the same amount of energy to reading that I do to math, science, social studies, and writing.

Chapter 6 has especially stuck out in my memory because it is in this chapter that Miller talks about 'Cutting the Teacher Strings'. She lays out the traditional methods teachers use to check for understanding, such as, Whole-Class Novels, Comprehension Tests, Book Reports, Reading Logs, Round-Robin or Popcorn Reading, and Incentive Programs. She goes on to tell how each of these things undermines our goal of having students become readers. As I was reading this chapter I kept thinking about how I had implemented just about all of these traditional practices as a way to check if my students were understanding their reading as well as to help them become a reader where they would actually start to read for fun! Miller then describes alternatives to each of these practices that do actually work toward our students becoming readers.

My students come into third grade on the first day asking when they get to do their first book report. As a rule I have never been a fan of book reports. However pressure from administration, parents, and students has led me to implement book reports during the past couple of years. I have never had them on a set schedule where I know exactly what kind of book report is required for each month of the school year, nor have I had students do a book report every month. Because of this dislike of book reports (but still keeping in mind that I am expected to assign them) I really like the alternative suggestion of having students do book commercials or book talks.

I always know when it is time to assign another book report, because I start to have students asking me when they are going to get their next one. I think that this time around I might implement book commercials for the remainder of the school year. I won't make a requirement about how often students must do a book commercial, but will instead set a number of recommended book commercials to do by the end of the school year. I think a good goal would be 3 book commercials knowing that several of my motivated readers will be able to do many more than 3 and knowing that some of my struggling readers will have a hard time completing 3.

I will start by modeling several different book commercials prior to giving the assignment to my students. One of the things that Miller did was have a time set aside on Fridays for students to give their book commercials. This seems like it would be a good time for me to implement this project because I have already adjusted my Friday schedule in order to accommodate reflection and goal setting.