My Reading Streak

Hi! I'm Lindsey! Last year when I was in 4th grade, my teacher, Mrs. Hartman, read a couple chapters of The Reading Promise near the end of the school year, to my classmates and I. It was about a girl in 4th grade (just like me!) and her dad that made a promise to read every single night for 100 nights! Once they got that achieved, they made another promise to read for 1,000 nights in a row!

When Mrs. Hartman read just the first and second chapters of that book I got inspired to do that with my mom. So on May 30th, 2012 my mom and I started to read the book: Now You See Me... It was great! It was also part of the Poison Apple series. Since I had the first six books in that series we started reading all of them! Each of the books were between 150-180 pages.

From May 30th to November 21st my mom and I have read the 3rd, 4th, 5th and we are almost done the 6th book of the Poison Apple series! We also have read 172 nights in a row, so far! I remember when my mom and I reached 50 nights in a row! I freaked out!

When my mom and I reached 100 nights I couldn't believe it!  Then came 150 nights! I was so happy I couldn't stay still! My mom and I are now trying to reach 200 nights! I think we can do it! If we complete that we are going to go for how long we can go, and hopefully never stop!

Thank you for reading my short story and hopefully you got inspired too!

Sinking Springs Family Book Club

UPDATE: We have chosen to postpone the book club at this time and reschedule it for a later date this winter yet to be determined. Look for updated dates/times and additional information coming soon.

After last week's visit from author, Alice Ozma, we hope that families and students at Sinking Springs are eager and ready to begin their own reading promises with someone.

As the next part of Sinking Springs' Reading Promise Project, we are looking for families who want to join us in the effort to make reading a special part of their everyday lives. Making time to fit reading into your schedule each day can be challenging. Finding ways to help your adolescent develop a love for reading can be daunting. To help you achieve these goals, Sinking Springs will be offering a family book club, based on Alice's book, The Reading Promise. 

Families who register to attend the first book club meeting will have the opportunity to:

• Connect with other Sinking Springs families to meet and discuss Alice Ozma's book, The Reading Promise.

• Discover new ways to encourage their children to develop a love of reading.

• Find out strategies for reading and discussing books with their children at home.

• Develop a support system of other families taking on reading promises and share ideas, successes, and challenges.

• Receive a FREE copy of Alice Ozma's book, The Reading Promise.

• Learn more about a variety of free reading resources available. 

• Win prizes to promote reading with their children. 

• Become guest bloggers on this blog.

The first meeting is scheduled for Monday, November 12 and additional meetings may be scheduled, depending on the availability and interest of participants. Throughout families' reading promise experiences, this blog will serve to connect readers and their promises, not only just from Sinking Springs, but all readers who wish to share about the reading promises happening in their lives.  

If you are a Sinking Springs member and want to join us for this excellent opportunity, click here to read additional information and register online.

If you are a guest visiting us from outside of Sinking Springs, but still want to join our conversation, connect with other readers, and share your reading promise experiences, please do! Join our ever-growing community of guest bloggers. Comment on our discussions and contact us to discuss ways that you can share your reading experiences through this blog. We'd love to have you!

Strategies to Keep the Streak Alive

Hi everyone!  This is Val from NYC again.  Today was day 80... wow, let me say that again... e_i_g_h_t_y... EIGHTY....80 of our family's reading streak!!  We started out on the first day of summer vacation with a goal to read every day of the break.  A week and a half ago, we met our summer's goal, celebrated over tea and scones, then reset the end date for our reading challenge.  Our new commitment is for me to read aloud to my boys for at least 10 minutes everyday for an entire year.

Definitely a daunting endeavor when I think of the 285 days of reading ahead of us.  Coupled with the busy school year, after school activities, chores, etc., just the idea of one more thing to do everyday can feel overwhelming.  So how are we fitting this one more thing into our everyday?

Here are our strategies for keeping our reading streak alive.

1. Make the commitment to read aloud everyday... or 5 days out of the week... or one book per month.  Whatever the decision, make a verbal and/or written commitment to do this.  If I had to decide each day whether or not to read, chances are I'd put off our reading time to the next day... when I have more energy... when they finish their homework... when there's not karate, piano, basketball, chess...  For us, no formal commitment would mean reading aloud only sporadically or not at all. 
2. Link reading time to something else that happens everyday.  During summer break, we read after breakfast.  Now that we're back in school, we try to read after dinner.  This works well because the kids eat much slower than I do.  Since I sit at the table with them until they finish their meals, reading aloud keeps me from digging into seconds and thirds and provides them with some food for thought.  What about bedtime reading?  If it works for you, go for it!  But I'm grumpy and tired by tuck in time.  The earlier in the day we can read, the cheerier and more patient I can be about it.
3. Designate a comfortable spot for read aloud times.  If we're only reading 10-15 minutes, we stay at the kitchen table.  If we're settling in for a long 45-60 minute reading session, we relocate to the living room couches.  I've noticed we are all able to focus best when we're in our designated reading spots.
4. Keep a selection of books on hand... because we're never sure what we'll be in the mood to read next.
5. Remember it might take a while to warm up to a story.  We've found it difficult to transition from one book to the next.  Sometimes it takes a few chapters before we settle into a new story. 
6. Leave yourselves the option to put a book down.  Our challenge is to read aloud everyday.  It's not to finish every book we start.  We have the option to choose not to complete a book if it's not working for us.
7. Weed out the competition.  By this, I mean that I limit the days and time that my kids can be plugged into electronics (TV, computer, 3DS, etc).  TV on weekends only means my reading to them is the only game in town most days of the week.
8. Be ready to improvise.  Some days are crazier than others.  If we're out and about all day then we just bring our book along & read wherever and whenever .  We've done our mandatory 10 minutes on the subway, sitting in the corner of Central Park (amidst pigeons and tourists), in airports, in the car and in restaurants.  Whatever works, right?

And that's it.  A few strategies and lots and lots of reading.  If you're thinking about starting your own reading streak, I hope our list is helpful to you.  If you have any suggestions or book recommendations for us, I'd love to hear from you!

6th Grade Reading Streak: Melville, Saskatchewan, Canada!

Our reading streak was inspired by the book "The Reading Promise."  Our whole class loves to read, it does not matter what book.
(Josh, Matthew & Jenna)

Our class loves to read, and since we love reading so much we set a goal.  Our goal is to read everyday for 100 days.  We are doing this because we want to build our stamina and become better readers.
(Zach, Jennaya & Kris)

Our class reading streak is to read every school day for 100 days.   If our teacher is away, a student volunteer will read.
(Taylor, Shelby & Andrew)

We are doing a reading streak, because we want to get inspired by the book.  We are reading "The One and Only Ivan."  It is about a silverback gorilla and his life in captivity.  It's based on a true story.
(Austin, Santana & Tapanga)

Happy Reading!
6th Grade Students from Mrs. Frederickson's Class at St. Henry's Senior High School
http://mrsfclass.blogspot.ca/ 

Day 4: Defining Our Promise

So I got too excited (imagine that?) and told my class about our Reading Promise Project already! Actually, I told them on the second day of school. I couldn't help it!

Last Thursday, our class was discussing our hopes and dreams, so I shared my biggest dream for my students this school year with the class: To help inspire my students to develop a love of reading by challenging our class to try to read together every day of our school year (184 days total) without missing a day. Obviously, I then had to explain all about Alice Ozma's reading streak with her father, my inspiration behind this idea. The class was awestruck at how many days Alice and her father were able to read together. Some had especially high aspirations for our class ("We can read every day for a century!!"), others weren't sure we could make it a month. I let the idea simmer with them for a bit and didn't bring it up again for a couple of days...which ended up being less than a whole week.

Today we talked about our reading promise together again. We started to discuss some more specifics of our expectations. Our answers haven't been completely decided upon yet, but here are some of the questions we started to consider. What will happen if I'm absent one day? What should we do if a student is absent? How long should we read each day to have it count? What obstacles do you anticipate happening this year that we'll need to plan for and overcome? 

Here is what we decided...

• A lot of varying amounts of time were thrown around when we brought this up. (My favorite answer to this one was an enthusiastic "all day!!!") But taking all of the students' ideas for times into consideration, along with the constraints of our schedule, we came up with the range of 15-20 minutes of reading aloud together.

• The students decided that I should be the one to read to them everyday, but we also talked about the potential problem of what will happen if I am absent one day. I loved the students' creative answers to this question! Some possible solutions included: having me phone in to read aloud to the class, allowing it to still count if the substitute takes over the reading for the day, doubling up on reading together once I'm back, or having the students take over the reading aloud for that day.

• We did decide that we won't count it against us if a student is absent. It's already happened to us this school year and it's hard to control, though I loved the students suggestion of having absent students continue our streak by reading from wherever they are outside of school that day!

• One of the first obstacles students thought of was field trips. We know for sure we will have two full day field trips this year. We decided that I should bring our book along with us and read to the class on the bus or during lunch. (Even though we usually get back from field trips with plenty of time to spare, I like these options much better. How fun would be to huddle together in the Pennsylvania State Capitol's lunch room, sharing a reading moment?)

• Another obstacle...snow days?! Do we count those against us? Do we have to find a creative way to still read together when school is cancelled? We ended up deciding that snow days don't count against us, since we make them up later in the school year. But, I did love one students' idea of emailing all the parents a reading of the chapters we'd miss that day so that the kids could still keep up with the book from home.

While our rules are still a work in progress, I loved the students' creative ideas! They are what the reading streak will be all about. They build excitement and enthusiasm for the process and experience.

Have any other classrooms or families out there decided on the rules for your reading promise? If so, do share!

Happy Reading!
Mrs. Hartman

Hopes & Dreams

At the beginning of every school year, I always spend the first few days with my fourth grade students discussing our hopes and dreams for the year. This idea is based on the Responsive Classroom approach to developing a positive learning environment with students. We read some books together (More Than Anything Else by Marie Bradby is one of my favorites for this!) and students think about the hopes and dreams that they have for the upcoming year. It is a great conversation for helping children to think about their goals and what actions will help to achieve them.

If you are joining us here and reading this post, hopefully it is because you are interested in taking on the challenge of starting a Reading Promise streak of your own. One of the first things to consider when creating a Reading Promise are the hopes and dreams of the members participating. Why are you embarking on this journey? Your ideas might be different from your child's ideas. That's ok! Discuss both! What do you hope to gain from this experience? Is this an opportunity to read more books, spend more time together, try out different genres, become better readers, discuss reading together more? When you envision yourself a month from now, six months from now, a year or more from now, what do you hope that you have accomplished? Ideally, think of how long you want to try to continue your streak. Alice and her father originally only planned on 100 days. Setting small, achievable goals will help to build confidence and enthusiasm.

Maybe you want to spend the first few days of your streak talking about this with your children, students, friends, etc. and reading books based around this theme. If you're looking for some ideas of books that match this idea, Responsive Classroom has a list of suggested books that they've found related to inspiring hopes and dreams. They also have a Hopes and Dreams Pinterest board devoted to the same topic. Check out their lists and see what you think. You may even have some ideas of your own. If you do, please share!!

Discussing your hopes and dreams related to the Reading Promise challenge will help you and your promise members to establish some goals. In turn, having some clear goals will help to keep you focused and on track with what your promise.

The hopes and dreams discussion also makes a great segue into giving children the some ownership in their learning to help create rules that will help them to achieve everyone's hopes and dreams (which, coincidentally, will be one of next steps in the Reading Promise process that we discuss).

What are your hopes and dreams for your Reading Promise? Share them with us! Can't wait to hear how these promises will inspire each of your families and classrooms.

Happy Reading!
Mrs. Hartman