The Book Whisperer

by Donalyn Miller

  We teachers have more than enough anecdotal evidence that the students who read the most are the best spellers, writers, and thinkers. No exercise gives more instructional bang for the buck than reading. The added bonus for us teachers? I have found that independent reading is also among the easiest instructional practices to plan, model, and implement.

  When Students Are Done

  My sixth-grade students are quirky, with one foot in childhood and one in adolescence. They still like teachers and are not too cool to show it. A flock of students are always eager to help me sort papers, run errands, or erase the board when they finish their class work for the day. Before I filled every stolen moment with invasive reading, students would ask me whether they could draw or do homework for other classes when they were done with their assignments and there were always a few students who disrupted others when they had finished their work. Their talking and classroom wanderings distracted the students who were still working and me while I was trying to assist others. Since I redesigned my class so that students use every free minute for independent reading, these disruptions have ceased. What should students do when they finish all of their assignments for the day? Student learning—reading, writing, and thinking—should continue from the first bell until the last. While we teachers decry the lack of time we have to teach, it seems that we misappropriate a great deal of what we do have on classroom chores and mindless work.

  A popular practice in many classrooms is the creation and use of folders filled with extension activities and extra practice sheets—exercises designed to occupy students who finish class assignments quickly. I made them, too, in those early years, back when I was stuck in the mode of doing what everyone else around me did. Like warm-ups, these fun folders for the fast finishers had little instructional value other than drill and practice and took hours of time to plan and create. When my students asked me whether they could read their books instead of doing the folder assignments, I got the message.

  When I took a closer look at those folders, it became clear to me that they were simply time wasters, busywork, and, in some ways, punishment for students who were capable. Students hate those supposedly fun folders. My husband, a self-proclaimed slacker in school, figured out that when he finished his assignments earlier than other students, his reward was more work. He began to work more and more slowly, stretching out assignments that he could easily have finished in order to avoid the extra work. I surely reject any activity that fosters underachievement in students! I got rid of the folders. And my students started reading. Invasive reading helps students meet their reading goals for the class, engages them in an enjoyable practice that contributes to their academic achievement, frees me to work with students that may need my help, and minimizes off-task behavior problems. I can tell when my students are done with their assignments by listening, not because my classroom becomes rowdy and loud but because it becomes quiet when every student is reading.

  At a recent district curriculum-writing meeting, a colleague expressed her concern when I told her that I did not plan extra activities for my students to complete when they were finished with their class work: “Aren’t you worried that they will rush through their work in order to get back to their books?” Amused by her shocked expression, I waited a beat, and answered, “Lord, I hope so!”

  Reflecting on the habits of life readers, it is clear that this reading time matches what they do anyway. What do adult readers do when they finish their work for the day? They reward themselves by snuggling up with their books.

  Picture Day

  Only those who work in schools can fully appreciate what a big deal picture day is. My sixth-grade girls show up decked out in sweater sets, curled hair, and high-heeled shoes they will only have to abandon before they go to gym. The boys sport button-down shirts (covering the T-shirts they usually wear) and dangerous levels of hair gel to maintain their spikes. Getting 850 students through the picture line in less than three hours is a marvel of institutional machinery. My students may love my class, but ditching it to stand in line and chat with their friends for thirty minutes holds a powerful allure. In years past, I spent most of my time during picture day walking up and down the line, monitoring behavior and shushing my students. The students who had already had their pictures taken and were waiting for the rest of the class were the rowdiest. Not only was I frustrated by my students’ behavior, but I was itchy about the class time I was losing.

  Once again, the habits of the readers in my classroom and my own experience of carrying a book everywhere I go led me to the answer. The penny dropped one picture day when I found myself holding three books for my voracious readers while they had photographs taken. Reclaiming this waiting time as reading time, we take our books to picture day now. I hold students’ books in a basket while they get their pictures taken, and then they grab them from me, sit against the wall, and read while waiting for the rest of the class. One year, my students were so accustomed to carrying their books with them to picture day and beyond that they insisted on posing with their books in the class yearbook picture that spring.

  I know that the more time students spend reading each day, the more ingrained it becomes as a daily habit. Recognizing the success of my efforts to carve out more reading time for my students, I constantly look for other chances for them to read during unstructured moments. Endless time is lost during a school year in waiting for assemblies, riding buses, and standing in lines. I have commandeered this unstructured time for my students to read, and as a result, misbehavior at such times is almost nonexistent and my students rack up substantial reading time that they formerly spent talking, getting into trouble, or standing around being bored (see Figure 3.1). Might I add that those students who are experts at stalling during reading time in class cannot hide the fact that they are not reading when it is a ubiquitous activity in my classroom throughout the school day? If everyone else in the class is sitting against the wall, reading, while waiting for class pictures and a few students aren’t, it becomes obvious quickly. By setting the expectation that reading is what we do, always, everywhere, it becomes the heart of a class’s culture. Even the most resistant readers can’t fight it if all of their friends comply.

  Library Time

  Ah, libraries. God, I love them—the rows and rows of books waiting for me, the comfy chairs beckoning me to linger and read. Full of what Virginia Woolf calls “sunk treasure,” libraries offer wealth to any reader. One of my great joys is that I get to work every day in a building with a library in it.

  FIGURE 3.1: Students read while waiting for their field-trip bus.

  In spite of the fact that we have an extensive classroom library of over two thousand books, I insist on taking my students to the school library on a regular basis—at least every two weeks, if not more often. Part of wearing a reader’s clothes is learning how to navigate a library and feeling at home in one. Poring through the stacks alongside my students is a great opportunity for me to show them how to find books, expose them to a larger collection, and teach library etiquette.

  Kim Gardner, my librarian friend, dubbed me the Pied Piper after watching a trail of students follow me through the library. She saw how hypnotized my students were while we looked at books and chose them together. Focusing their efforts on finding books and reading during library visits are not skills students always enter my class with, however. These behaviors must be modeled and explicitly taught. Many students see a trip to the library as yet another opportunity for free time or a chance to goof off with their friends and cluster in groups to chat under the guise of looking for books. Neither teachers nor librarians should spend classroom library visits monitoring behavior. Their time is better spent helping students find books to read. Library time should not be perceived as unstructured free time by students or, worse, lost instructional time by their teachers. I know middle school teachers who do not even take their students to the library because to them, it is a “waste of class time.” If library visits
are focused on choosing books and stealing time to read, there is no need to bark at students to find a book or shush them. Students rise to the level of their teacher’s expectations, so make your expectations for library visits clear.

  Setting Goals for Library Use

  Setting the goals of reading and selecting books when my students go to the library happens on our first visit. My modeling starts with my giddiness as the first library day arrives. I begin mentioning to students that we are going to the library several days ahead of time and imagine with them the wonderful books we will find there. I post library days on our class Web site. I want students to pick up on the fact that I think library days are events to anticipate. On the big day, I always ask a student to remind me when it is a few minutes before our assigned library time, so that we can line up and get there promptly.

  When we line up to go to the library, every student must have a book to return, renew, or read, or a plan to get one at the library. Because the main source of books for my students is our own classroom library, students may bring these books if they do not want to check out an additional book from the school library. If students do not carry a book, then they will spend their time in the library looking for one. The goal is that everyone walks out of the library with a book to read. My students tease me, crying, “Not fair!” when they realize that by teaching two classes, I get double trips to the library on a single day.

  When we get to the library, all students are purposeful. If they are checking out books, they immediately begin looking. Students who are not checking out books head to quiet corners and read. No one visits, no one clusters, and no one talks. OK, not exactly true .... A devoted tribe of followers accompanies me and chats while we roam the stacks, hunting and gathering books. I spend the entire visit helping students locate books, but I cannot contain my own excitement when I discover treasures I would like to read, too. My students are jealous of the teacher perks of library use—no fines, no due dates, and unlimited checkouts—all privileges I exploit fully.

  Because I work with my students to find books and eliminate off-task library behavior, our librarian is free to check out books and assist students who need help with searching the library’s online catalogue. When everyone has a book to read, we all sit and read until our library time ends or we leave the library and go back to class to read.

  How Much Time Is It, Really?

  Counting all the snippets of time I manage to gather in a typical school week, how much reading time do I really capture for my students? Replacing warm-ups with reading time and stealing as many stray moments as possible, I calculate, gains twenty to thirty minutes of reading per day. The Commission on Reading’s touchstone report Becoming a Nation of Readers recommends that students engage in two hours of silent sustained reading per week (Anderson, Hiebert, Scott, and Wilkinson, 1985). Without giving up any instructional time, you could easily find two hours a week for your students. If you are willing to set aside a chunk of class time for independent reading as well, your students could be reading as much as four hours a week in school.

  My students are now time stealers themselves, using otherwise wasted time in their daily routine to read. Paul reads at the bus stop in the mornings, and Daniel reads while waiting for his mom to pick him up from school. Alex reads at lunchtime, and Madison reads at recess while she sits under a tree. Once students catch the reading bug, they will go to great lengths to find time to read.

  While I was greeting students in the hall one morning, Molly breathlessly ran up to me to share the creative way she was able to continue reading her latest mystery book, The Ghost’s Grave, by Peg Kehret. “Mrs. Miller, you have had such an influence on me. Last night I read in the shower!”

  Amused, I asked, “How were you able to read in the shower and keep the book dry?”

  Other students gathered around us, not to look at the reading freak but to listen to Molly’s advice so they could do it, too. “I was at the end of my book, and my mom was yelling for me to get in the shower. So I hung my arm out of the shower as far as possible so I could keep reading it.”

  Another student suggested, “Hey, I wonder if you could slide a Ziploc bag over a book to protect it while you read it in the shower!”

  Although I am disinclined to recommend reading books in the shower, for the health of both the reader and the book, it is important to encourage young readers when they explore options for reading anywhere they can. Adult readers have mastered this art, reading in airports, while commuting, or in doctors’ offices to alleviate boredom. Readers steal time to read.

  Creating a Place for Reading

  The time to read is any time: no apparatus, no appointment of time and place, is necessary. It is the only art which can be practised at any hour of the day or night, whenever the time and inclination comes, that is your time for reading; in joy or sorrow, health or illness.

  —Holbrook Jackson

  My husband, Don, carries a book with him everywhere. Even though I am a reader, too, it irritated me in the early years of our marriage when he would bring a book to Thanksgiving dinner at my mother’s house or on trips to the grocery store. Once, he walked into a tree in the middle of a city sidewalk because he was reading as he moseyed home from work. I marvel at Don’s ability to read anywhere, even in noisy crowds or standing up. After many jealous moments when we would find ourselves unexpectedly stuck somewhere, Don with his book and me without one, I started carrying a book everywhere I went, too. Don and I prefer to read our books curled up on the couch at home, but we do not need an ideal environment in order to snatch some reading time. With this kind of I-can-read-anywhere attitude, I’m not an advocate of the reading corner, as anyone who visits my classroom will quickly note.

  Imagine a small room with twenty-nine sixth graders of various heights and sizes, an overflowing library of more than two thousand books, and all of the items a school requires a teacher to keep on hand—crisis tubs, file cabinets, and textbook ancillaries—and you have my classroom. I do not have the space to dedicate a corner for reading.

  As you probably know, I read at my

  relative’s house in Miami. I don’t

  think they really cared, of course they

  might have been talking about me in

  Spanish, but I wouldn’t know.

  —Michelle

  When we were at a rodeo and the

  main act was two little kids dancing

  around with ribbons and streamers

  and the rodeo contestants got ready,

  I just pulled out Behind the

  Bedroom Wall and finished it

  before the barrel racing

  .—Marilyn

  Jace, of book-frenzy fame, and his mom donated an old leather sofa to my classroom a few years ago when they bought a new one. After nominating several names and taking a class vote, my students christened it “Aunt Fanny” (see Figure 3.2). Poor Aunt Fanny is now crammed under the windowsill. We have a motley collection of beanbag chairs that I have scavenged over the years from donations and garage sales, which my students fall over constantly. We do have wonderful adjustable lighting—one of the perks of being at a new school. I keep the lights dimmed a little so that students can read without the harsh glare of fluorescence. I do not care where or how my students read in my room, only that they are reading. They may lie on the floor, take their shoes off, or remain at their desks. Why should it matter?

  One morning, while dragging my students out of their books with my usual call, “Ladies and gentlemen, come to a stopping place,” I noticed that Daniel, always one of the hardest to pull out of his book, was not heading back to his desk. I went looking for him. Daniel had wedged himself into a corner between the sofa and a bookcase, a self-created burrow where he could read in peace, out of the traffic flow.

  Countless reading mavens emphasize in their books and workshops the importance of setting up a dedicated place for students to read. Rugs, cushions, lamps, bookcases—all should be delibe
rately and artfully placed to create a reading sanctuary. Rankling over the space limitations in my classroom, it frustrated me when I could not feng shui my furniture and the children into some sort of reading oasis. I was letting the gurus down and, probably, my students. I once mentioned to Ron, my principal, that I wanted to pull out all of the desks and drag in couches and coffee tables, turning my room into a Barnes & Noble. He laughed and shook his head. He thought I was joking ....

  FIGURE 3.2: Students read while sitting on Aunt Fanny.

  As I often do when confronted with an ideal that I cannot seem to achieve, I stepped back to reconsider the true intent of the dedicated reading corner. As I see it, the reading area in a classroom is meant to serve two purposes: to send the message to students that reading is important by setting aside a prominent place for it in the room and to provide students with comfortable condi tions in which to read by not confining them to institutionally mandated seating at desks under harsh lighting. Can we do this without the community rug and the floor lamps? Of course we can.

  Have you ever tried reading upside down on the monkey bars ? Let’s just say that one didn’t work out very well. The book fell and I lost my page, so I tried for it and I landed on my head. Not smart!

  —Brittany

  I have never seen a student who became a reader because of access to a beanbag chair. What do we hope to accomplish by designing a living room in which students can read? After all, don’t we bemoan the fact that students don’t read in their living room at home? If you have a quiet reading corner, by all means, use it. I support any classroom design that makes it less institutional and more inviting to students, but don’t regret it if you don’t have the resources or space for a dedicated reading area. Readers are remarkably ingenious and resourceful when it comes to finding a place to read.