On Recreational Reading in Middle School

One of the common themes to my parent meetings each year revolves around the importance of recreational reading.  Is your kid reading outside of his school assignments? How much is enough? What should you do if your child only reads fantasy novels, only reads Sports Illustrated, only reads comics?  Ultimately, whether it’s the comics or Cervantes, recreational reading should be recreational. As parents, you can create an environment which encourages your kid to read through setting some expectations in terms of how much reading is reasonable for your child.  The key is to offer your child some choice within the guidelines you set.

What counts as reading?

Second only to writing in terms of cognitive processes engaged, reading is an important way your child develops vocabulary, grammar and sentence structure, understanding of ideas big and small, and connects them into the thinking and actions of others.  Additionally, reading for just 20 minutes a day is linked to higher test scores, the likelihood of college admittance, as well as stronger career and economic opportunities. There are benefits for all of us in picking up a book or checking out an online article every day as a part of our regular routine.  So how do we encourage our busy, energetic, and multi-talented children to stop, drop, and read?

Share a book or article:

Talking about what your kids are reading is a way to broaden the learning and impact of the topic.  Discussion and social interaction give the brain more opportunity to reflect on what was read, consider other points of view, and develop a stronger sense of theme/real-world connections.

Participate in Twitter:

At 140 characters a post, Twitter may seem far from an actual “reading” resource, but more and more professionals and hobbyists are using it as a platform to share the best of their thinking and learning.  Consider having your child follow leaders in his or her area of interest. Often, the best tweeters are writing blog posts and articles that are directly linked to posts and can lead your kid to head down the rabbit hole of reading without even trying.  Maybe it will even inspire your child to start his or her own blog on a topic. And don’t leave yourself out of the mix - you can follow the same people as your child and even add yourself to some groups about how to find more great reading ideas for your family!

Set reasonable challenges:

Our lives are busy and so are those of your children.  Fifteen to twenty minutes of reading outside of school work can be a manageable goal.  Consider family reading time before or after (or in place of?) screen time. If you are concerned that your child is not reading at all, let anything that is not school related count - comics, graphic novels, news articles, maybe even Facebook posts.  If your concern is that your child seems stuck in a certain genre, challenge them to read something different once a week or one out of every 4 books. Your children can use goodreads and the Lexile Find a Book sites to get a wealth of suggestions

See below for specific articles and resources for your readers at home.

READING for MIDDLE SCHOOLERS

Best Young Adult Books
Dr. Given's Young Adult Book Recommendations

Summer Reading Lists for Middle School Kids

The Best Books for Middle School


READING for BOYS
Best Fiction for Middle School Boys - from Goodreads
History and Non-Fiction for Teenage Boys
50 Best Books for Boys and Young Men - From The Art of Manliness - Heavy on fiction with a few manuals thrown in (Boy Scouts of America), this list is a lovely mix of classic and contemporary titles. Any list that starts out with Gary Paulsen is a winner!

READING for SPORTS ENTHUSIASTS
Books about Sports
The Reading Level of Sports Writing
The 64 Best Sports Books of All Time
Top 50 Sports Writers to Follow on Twitter
Best sports writing of the century - A book about the 20th-century sports articles and writing that make the grade - nice historical connections

READING for FANTASY FANS
Popular Middle School Fantasy Books
Best Fantasy Books for Middle Schoolers - student-generated
Fantasy and Science Fiction for Middle School - librarian generated

READING for MYSTERY SLEUTHS
9 Best Mysteries for Kids - reading level tops out at age 12 but there are some great titles on here
Teen Fiction - Mysteries and Thrillers - Barnes and Noble recommendations
50 Must Read Mysteries for Middle Schoolers

READING for HISTORY BUFFS
Teen Historical Fiction - 825 titles with teens as protagonists
Best Sellers in Teen and Young Adult Historical Fiction - Amazon
Best Historical Fiction for Teens - Madison Public Library
Historical Fiction for Hipsters - From Reading Rants - a blog of "out of the ordinary teen book reading lists".

READING to BROADEN PERSPECTIVES
30 Multicultural Reads Every Teen Should Know
15 Best Multicultural Novels for Middle Grades
Culturally Responsive Book Lists

Thanks and happy reading!  

What I Learned from George Couros Today

Today I had the honor to see George Couros speak at the Summit Country Day School.  It seems appropriate that about a year after my initial post on this blog about Innovator's Mindset, I would finally follow up with more details from its author.  I found George to be fast-talking, funny and human and susceptible to sharing multiple youtube videos that made me get all verklempt (it's just allergies, I swear).  I was going to tweet all of the moments that gave me pause during his presentations today but figured a longer post was a better fit as I work out the ways I want to put what I learned today into practice.

George mentioned that when adults use technology to find answers, we call them resourceful.  When students use technology to find answers, we call that cheating.  Why aren't students permitted to use their resources when they are taking a test?  If the answers can be found by googling, do they really need to have that content memorized?  Isn't it more important that they use that knowledge to make a connection, solve a problem, or create their own content?

Your Fears & Beliefs Create the Edges of a Child's Playground

I often hear discussions in our schools about what and when we should and should not allow students to have access to in terms of websites, technological apps, and social networking.  The focus on what we, as adults, are afraid of what kids might do online comes from our own lack of experience and from actual stories of what has happened to some children due to bad choices.  I have never believed that web filters keep students "safe" online. We all know how well banning something from students works in general.  What if instead, we embraced using the technologies with our students?    I appreciated George's message today about modeling positive uses of technology within real-world contexts.  

Someone today asked the question of how to help kids become digital leaders online within the context of building positive uses of social networking.  How do we help kids to deal with FOMO and keeping up with the curated lives of peers on Instagram and other networks?  George's answer was not what teachers or parents can do, but how can we help kids to create leadership teams interested in building positive culture online.

My favorite idea - I want to create a communications team of students for our classroom where they get to decide how and what we share about our learning with the greater community.

Your Digital Footprint Matters - And Is a Part of Who You Are

George showed us all the ways in which his two-and-a-half-year-old daughter already has an online presence.  While many parents shy away from having photos and info about their children online, George's point was that he and his wife want to help their daughter create a positive online presence - not from a public relations point of view but from an authentic digital self-timeline.  Colleges and employers already regularly Google potential students and employees.  What would they find if they Googled your name or your students' names?  

While I love Google Classroom for managing the work students complete and turn in, one of its limitations, in the name of keeping students safe, is that no one outside the school domain, including parents, can access the course.  I appreciate so many of the free tools that Google has created and keep finding new ways to use these to improve the instruction I provide to my students, but I think student work needs to have an authentic audience.  I'm considering how blogs, websites or another tool might be better to help students develop a positive online footprint as well as make their work public to an authentic audience.

Teachers Need PLNs | Students Need an Authentic Audience

George did a great job of illustrating the power of Twitter as a learning network for teachers.  He also made a good case for going beyond being simply a consumer of content to becoming a digital leader that gives back to the community through creating content - both as teachers and for our own students.  We ask our students to solve the problems and scenarios we design for them.  There are certainly enough problems already in the world that can be used to connect to the content and skills we are expected to teach.  Why not help students find the problems they are interested in solving and teach through a more authentic and student-led pedagogy?

There are many great online resources, thoughtful quotes, and ideas I received this morning thanks to George's willingness to share his wisdom with today's audience.  If you liked any of these ideas, I suggest you read his blog and consider purchasing his book, Innovator's Mindset.

Most of all, today was an uplifting reminder to do a better job of creating content, be a more active member of my PLN, offer more opportunities for my students to find problems that matter and then solve them, and model positivity, the high road, and being nice, online and IRL!