Happy New Year! Hopefully, you had time between the holidays to enjoy some downtime for yourself. I made it a point to do so and took advantage of the time to catch up on some reading. Typically, I have a list of “Books on my RADAR” to refer to when making a new book selection, but shortly before the holidays I came across a twitter post by Pernille Ripp which caught my attention. I then found one of her books titled Passionate Readers: The Art of Reaching and Engaging Every Child on Amazon and, thanks to Amazon Prime, I had my book for break.
I almost didn’t purchase the book because it sounded similar to Donalyn Miller’s The Book Whisperer and Penny Kittle's Book Love (Two books I highly recommend by the way).. However where Miller does a great job of explaining why it is important to nurture a culture of readers with a lot of student choice for the elementary level and Kittle focuses on the 30,000 foot view of the topic for the secondary level , Ripp, as a 7th grade ELA teacher, goes a little deeper and gets in to the “how” to pull it off in a very limited (45 minutes) class time that is more typical for grades 6-12. As a result, I believe Passionate Readers would be a great book to read and discuss as a PLC for any ELA team in grades 6-12.
In this book, Ripp shares her journey from her more reader centered 5th grade classroom with its 90 minute block of time to a 45 minute 7th grade ELA class that really challenged her approach to nurturing passionate readers. Specifically, she shares five keys of passionate readers:
1. Teacher Reading Identity and How it Matters
-Emphasis here is if we want our students to become passionate readers we must become visible readers ourselves. This includes being familiar with young adult reading, understanding that our feelings of reading influence our students' feelings on reading, being aware of our own book gaps, and many other applicable pieces of advice.
2. How Our Physical Space Affects Our Reading Experience
- “This is not about the furniture we have, but the experience we create” (Ripp, 2018, p.24). The environment also is one in which the students do not feel powerless, but instead feel like they have control over many parts of their learning day. (Ripp, 2018)
3. The Classroom Library as a Cornerstone of the Passionate Reading Community
- This is all about getting books in front of kids in a timely manner. Ripp eludes to even if your room is right across the hall to the library it is still too far away when a student finishes a book and is looking to start another. She also pointed out that, knowing funds are limited, quality should trump quantity. A small class library with books the students will read is better than a lot of books which the students will not pick-up.
4. The Reality of the Passionate Reader Learning Community
- Not every kid is going to like reading and Ripp shares some advice on how she hooked kids (not always successfully) into becoming more passionate about reading. Hint: Part of it had to do with presentation and access
5. Developing Student Reading Identity By Making Reading a Personal Journey
- Our district’s Reading Specialist, Jen Miller, often says that we should be cultivating a love of reading in our students that extends beyond the walls of our classrooms. Ripp addresses this point in her fifth and final key of developing passionate readers. Interestingly, this includes the power behind being able to, as well as knowing when to, abandon a book.
Within each of the keys, Ripp references a basic framework of “What I thought I did then.”, “What I think I do now.”, and “Suggested components of change”. She also provides a series of questions on which to reflect for your own classroom and teaching philosophy.
I suspect this blog post came across more like a “book report” or something similar, but I wanted to give you a taste of what Passionate Readers addresses. In the end, it is one more way we can promote student choice and voice in the classroom. In general, I recognize it is some version of the Readers’ and Writers’ Workshop model and would encourage it, despite the time constraints, in the 6-12 classroom setting. I have often said, in education time is currency, so we should reflect on how we are currently using the time in our classrooms. If we look back and we don’t see the time being spent on what we most value, we should step back and re-examine how we are spending the time. In short, if we want students to become better readers and writers we have to have them read more and write more. If we want them to become passionate, we have to provide the time and environment to nurture that as well. It is a messy prospect, which is why they call it a workshop, that won’t be perfect the first time you try it, but “a journey of 1000 miles begins with a single step”...right? Ripp shares how she is attempting to create such an environment one book at a time, one conversation at a time, and therefore one step at a time.
References
Ripp, Pernille (2018). Passionate Readers: The Art of Reaching and Engaging
Every Child. New York, NY: Routledge Press
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