Outside Reading

Clockwise from top left: student-designed shirts promoting books for an outside reading festival, book cover projects, tallies in the May 2009 outside reading competition, the reading corner of my room at ACS

Sometimes I think popular authors like J.K. Rowling and Stephanie Meyer act as P.R. agents for the most beautiful works of literature. It seems that the more students I can get interested in scifi, fantasy, adventure, and teen fiction, the more students I have who love English. I spend a lot of time trying to hook my students on every kind of literature. Below, you'll see a list of the ways I keep outside reading interesting for my students, which I used in an article I wrote this year called "The Call to Armchairs."

• Invite teachers, parents, or other community members to do guest book talks
• Create a tic-tac-toe or Bingo card with book titles, and offer a prize to anyone who reads all the books in one row
• Have a competition between several classes to see who can read the most, or an individual competition among all students
• Put up certificates in a wall of fame for anyone who reads over 1,000 or 5,000 pages
• Put on a book festival in which each student creates a project about his/her favorite book – have food and music, invite other classes
• Create a “Favorite Reads” blog and post student reviews of their favorite books for future classes (see ours at www.acsreads.blogspot.com)
• Spend a whole class period in the library encouraging students to explore every area – fiction and nonfiction
• Connect outside reading books to the curriculum, giving short book talks when a book relates to the class material. For example, pitch Into the Wild while reading Walden, The Things They Carried while reading A Farewell to Arms, Slam while reading The Scarlet Letter. If you’re having students create graphic novel pages from a text or as an autobiographical project, pitch Maus and Persepolis on the day you introduce the assignment.
• Assign or invite students to interview parents or teachers about their favorite books and create recommendation posters

Recently I watched as a student stared in disbelief at the outside reading "Top 10" list on the wall. "Him? But he's so stupid!" said the student. I took pleasure in correcting him. The boy he was talking about is one of my best readers, a student with a voracious mind, a strong fluid writing style, and almost no desire to speak in class. He had read 3,000 pages of outside reading in the second quarter, shattering others' impressions of him as a lazy, untalented student. He recently won our class poetry slam, and seems to be on the road to sharing what he humorously calls his "secret genius."