Closing Out the School Year and Reflecting On it All

I don't know about you, but this school year did NOT slow down. In fact, it seemed that at the time it is usually allowing us to take a deep breath and do some REAL teaching things just became hectic and someone put the pedal to the metal! However, the last week or so with my students was a sweet time in our reading community! The next several posts are a collection of things that we did together as readers during the last week of school and the thoughts I came away with as a reading teacher...

1) Book Award Banquet!!!

In an earlier post I explained a bit about how we set up our book award nominations. Well it ended up being a close race in several of the categories. We even had to have a run off in a few instances! On the day of our book banquet I used Booksource's classroom organizer (which I used all year to have students check out books, but more on that later) and found which books were checked out the MOST all year long. I created a powerpoint and revealed the TOP TEN to each class! They loved cheering for each book (because these were their favorites after all...) and I loved watching their faces as each book was revealed! Here were a few of our MOST checked out books:

#5

#4

#3/2 It was a TIE!!!

Amulet 1 - This was by FAR the most read book in my classroom this year. However, I believe it didn't reach #1 status because it was passed hand to hand so often.

Darth Paper Strikes Back

#1 Origami Yoda - A true favorite!

After looking at my top 10 most checked out books I realized a few things... Last year I barely had any graphic novels in my classroom. These were obviously the MOST popular books by far this year! What did my students read last year? I noticed throughout the year that many of my students found it difficult to stick with chapter books. They are lacking in stamina and book experiences - BIG TIME! However, the graphic novels provided stepping stones for many of them to be successful in longer chapter books. Some of the graphic novels look long like a chapter book, so kids figure - well if I can read a long book like Amulet, then I can read a long book like Superfudge. Books like the Magic Pickle series and Captain Underpants are great bridges from graphic novels to chapter books. Also, kids tend to comprehend deeply when reading the graphic novels. They are fully engaged. There is nothing better as a reading teacher than having a kid fully engaged in a text. They were clamoring for these books all year. Hoarding them in some cases. I need to come up with a new way to keep them circulating quickly through my 4 classes for next year. I can imagine there are teachers and parents out there who think that this is not real reading. I can assure you that it is... My teaching will forever be changed after seeing the effects of graphic novels on my readers this year!