speaker 0:   0:00
Hey, teachers. If you have a classroom and a commute, you're in the right place. I'm your host. Rachael and I want to ride along with you each week on your ride into school. This podcast is the place for busy teachers toe want actionable tips, simple strategies and just want to enjoy their job more. Let's go.  

speaker 0:   0:33
Hey, what's up, you guys? It's Rachael Parlett. I am so excited to finally finally be doing this podcast with you. I have been wanting to do a podcast for way too long, and I've put it off and today is the day I am finally doing it, and I am so excited that you're along for the ride. I truly hope that this is going to be a place for you to get actionable tips and easy strategies that you can do with your soon's right away from all about simple and easy and fun. So why don't we just jump on in, shall we?  

speaker 0:   1:07
Today I want to talk to you about three ways that you can create a strong community of readers, and the reason I want to focus on this today is because so many times we focus all of our energy on the individual student and we think about, you know, Are they progressing in their reading? Are they reading above grade level below grade, level on grade level and so on? And we don't spend a whole lot of time, or at least I didn't used to spend a whole lot of time on building a community of readers.  If you just think about it when we read books as adults, we want to talk about it with other people. There's a reason why book clubs exist, right, because we want to engage in conversation and share that experience of reading with other people. And I think a lot of times teachers don't, at least enough, provide that experience for students to engage with each other in the books that they're reading.  

speaker 0:   2:02
So I'm gonna give you three strategies today that are super easy, super simple, and that you could even start tomorrow in your classroom if you want. Now, don't worry, Later on in this season, I have some episodes where we're going to dive deeper into some more advanced strategies of things that you can do in your classroom to build a stronger community of readers. But today I want to start simple so that I can send you out with a quick win that you can use in your classroom right away. Let's go ahead and get started.

speaker 0:   2:29
As we begin, I want to paint a little picture for you. Okay, so imagine this with me. You and your students are joined at the gathering area, and maybe you've called them over to share a re allowed or an anchor text. You're gonna talk about the book? Maybe you'll teach a skill or too. And then you're going to send your kiddos off to their desks for some independent reading. Sounds like a typical mini lesson, right? Well, then maybe once they're at their seats, you'll meet with a small group in guided reading, and you might even conference with a few students. And then at the end of that time, you're going to bring everybody back to the gathering area once again and you might have a few students share out how they applied the skill or the strategy that they were supposed to be working on. That you taught about in the mini lesson. That sounds pretty typical right, And that certainly was how my reading block was day in and day out. Um, there was a lot of focus on individual students and then the small guided reading groups, but there were very few opportunities for the students to take charge and connect with each other and share their reading experiences outside of my guided instruction. We want our students to love reading, but we often forget that reading is enhanced through experiencing it with others and creating a community of readers where students can't wait to talk to each other about what they're reading. This type of environment can be made with just a few ongoing activities, and today I want to share with you the simple, simple ways that you can cultivate a community of readers in your classroom. All right, are you with me? Let's dive right in.

speaker 0:   0:00
So once you come up with the categories, you're going to create a ballot form that students are going to cast their vote on and they're gonna you're gonna have all the categories listed, and the students are gonna pick one book from each category. Then you tally up all the votes and you have an awards ceremony and students love it. You can have envelopes for each category, and you invite students to kind of present the award and reveal the winner to the class. You can even have a picture of the book cover in the envelope and then use those pictures to kind of create a display in your classroom. So there you have it. Three simple ways that you can create a stronger community of readers by just doing a few simple strategies in your classroom. Let's review them real quick one more time. The first way is to create a recommended book, Been in Your Classroom, where students place the books that they've read and recommend to their classmates. The second way is a critics quarter, and you are going to host a weekly or monthly or quarterly critics corner session where several students will give a review on the books that they have read independently. And then thirdly, you can have a class book awards where students celebrate the books that you have read together as a whole class and your read aloud, and they vote on their favorite book within a certain category. All right, I hope you can use one of those ideas in your classroom soon. And for all of the details about the things that we've discussed in this episode, you can go over to classroom nook dot com forward slash podcast florid slash one just the number one So all of the show notes to be right there waiting for you. And I can't wait to carpool with you again next week. Take care.

speaker 0:   0:00
All right, the third way that you can cultivate a classroom community of readers is to have a classroom book awards ceremony. I love this idea. It's kind of similar to the critics corner, but it focuses on the books that you guys have read together as a class. So your read aloud any anchor text that you use. It has to be books that all students have read or listen to, maybe even in there listening center, because they all have to know what the book is about. And how it works is this:  Throughout the month when you're reading several books, keep track of those books, maybe even create a bin or basket where  you keep the books that you've read together.  And then you're going to think about categories that those books can fit into. For example: funniest books, books with the most interesting characters, books with the most surprising endings...etc. You could even tie it in the skills that you've been teaching. So, for example, if you've been teaching how to write an interesting lead in the story, maybe you have a category for the book with the most interesting lead that you've used to model this skill.  You can tie it into your curriculum as much as you can.

speaker 0:   0:00
So once you come up with the categories, you're going to create a ballot form that students are going to cast their vote on and they're gonna you're gonna have all the categories listed, and the students are gonna pick one book from each category. Then you tally up all the votes and you have an awards ceremony and students love it. You can have envelopes for each category, and you invite students to kind of present the award and reveal the winner to the class. You can even have a picture of the book cover in the envelope and then use those pictures to kind of create a display in your classroom. So there you have it. Three simple ways that you can create a stronger community of readers by just doing a few simple strategies in your classroom. Let's review them real quick one more time. The first way is to create a recommended book, Been in Your Classroom, where students place the books that they've read and recommend to their classmates. The second way is a critics quarter, and you are going to host a weekly or monthly or quarterly critics corner session where several students will give a review on the books that they have read independently. And then thirdly, you can have a class book awards where students celebrate the books that you have read together as a whole class and your read aloud, and they vote on their favorite book within a certain category. All right, I hope you can use one of those ideas in your classroom soon. And for all of the details about the things that we've discussed in this episode, you can go over to classroom nook dot com forward slash podcast florid slash one just the number one So all of the show notes to be right there waiting for you. And I can't wait to carpool with you again next week. Take care.

speaker 0:   0:00
The 2nd idea that I have to share with you. The second tip is called Critics Corner. Do you remember that TV show that was on, I think in the mid nineties, maybe even early two thousands, the movie critic show by Siskel and Ebert, and they would give their two thumbs up or two thumbs down for the movies that were being newly released. Well, that's where I got this idea for my classroom. And I called it Critics Corner. And I'm sure you've seen a variety of, um, ways that this is kind of played out in the classroom, but this is just my kind of take on it. So essentially, what's gonna happen if students are going to read their own books? And then as they complete the book, they can sign up to appear on Critics Corner and to be on the critics corner show Or however you want to call it, they complete this review and I would provide a guided script for students who needed it and some some didn't. But especially at the beginning, when you're first starting this out in your classroom, you might want to provide some sort of guided script and essentially, students to share their favorite things about the book, things that surprise them and anything else that they might want to share about the characters or the events. And then each critic, I'm using quotes right now for critic. Each critic would give their final rating of the book two thumbs up, two thumbs down. However, they want to kind of rate that book, and you can do this on a monthly basis, a weekly basis. We would try to do ours on Friday afternoons, a CZ, much as we could. You might find that that's a little too often, but depending on the age, your students. But you find a schedule that works for you, and then when you're having your monthly or weekly or quarterly critics corner, you just invite a few students to review their books in front of the class, and then you can allow other students to respond and ask questions about the review, You can have a really fun chair that they sit in or where a funky had our glasses and share their review with the students. And it's such a great motivator for students because everybody wants to be on Critics Corner. Once you started, you can also have a bulletin board in your classroom where you display the reviews that students are writing about their books, and then other students can refer back to them and read that book that that student has recommended. All right, the third way that you can cultivate a classroom community of readers is to have a classroom book awards ceremony. I love this idea. It's kind of similar to the critics corner, but it focuses on the books that you guys have read together as a class. So your read aloud any anchor text that you use. It has to be books that all students have read or listen to, maybe even in there listening center, because they all have to know what the book is about, and how it works is throughout the month when you're reading several books, keep track of those books, maybe even create a binner basket where you create where you keep the books that you've read together, and then you're going to think about categories that thes BookScan fit into. So funniest books, books with the most interesting characters books with the most surprising endings. You could even kind of tie it into the skills that you've been teaching. So, for example, if you've been teaching how to write in interesting lead in the story, maybe you have a category for the book with the most interesting lead that you've used to model this skill so you can tie it into your curriculum as much as you can. So once you come up with the categories, you're going to create a ballot form that students are going to cast their vote on and they're gonna you're gonna have all the categories listed, and the students are gonna pick one book from each category. Then you tally up all the votes and you have an awards ceremony and students love it. You can have envelopes for each category, and you invite students to kind of present the award and reveal the winner to the class. You can even have a picture of the book cover in the envelope and then use those pictures to kind of create a display in your classroom. So there you have it. Three simple ways that you can create a stronger community of readers by just doing a few simple strategies in your classroom. Let's review them real quick one more time. The first way is to create a recommended book, Been in Your Classroom, where students place the books that they've read and recommend to their classmates. The second way is a critics quarter, and you are going to host a weekly or monthly or quarterly critics corner session where several students will give a review on the books that they have read independently. And then thirdly, you can have a class book awards where students celebrate the books that you have read together as a whole class and your read aloud, and they vote on their favorite book within a certain category. All right, I hope you can use one of those ideas in your classroom soon. And for all of the details about the things that we've discussed in this episode, you can go over to classroom nook dot com forward slash podcast florid slash one just the number one So all of the show notes to be right there waiting for you. And I can't wait to carpool with you again next week. Take care.

speaker 0:   0:00
The 2nd idea that I have to share with you. The second tip is called Critics Corner. Do you remember that TV show that was on, I think in the mid nineties, maybe even early two thousands, the movie critic show by Siskel and Ebert, and they would give their two thumbs up or two thumbs down for the movies that were being newly released. Well, that's where I got this idea for my classroom. And I called it Critics Corner. And I'm sure you've seen a variety of, um, ways that this is kind of played out in the classroom, but this is just my kind of take on it. So essentially, what's gonna happen if students are going to read their own books? And then as they complete the book, they can sign up to appear on Critics Corner and to be on the critics corner show Or however you want to call it, they complete this review and I would provide a guided script for students who needed it and some some didn't. But especially at the beginning, when you're first starting this out in your classroom, you might want to provide some sort of guided script and essentially, students to share their favorite things about the book, things that surprise them and anything else that they might want to share about the characters or the events. And then each critic, I'm using quotes right now for critic. Each critic would give their final rating of the book two thumbs up, two thumbs down. However, they want to kind of rate that book, and you can do this on a monthly basis, a weekly basis. We would try to do ours on Friday afternoons, a CZ, much as we could. You might find that that's a little too often, but depending on the age, your students. But you find a schedule that works for you, and then when you're having your monthly or weekly or quarterly critics corner, you just invite a few students to review their books in front of the class, and then you can allow other students to respond and ask questions about the review, You can have a really fun chair that they sit in or where a funky had our glasses and share their review with the students. And it's such a great motivator for students because everybody wants to be on Critics Corner. Once you started, you can also have a bulletin board in your classroom where you display the reviews that students are writing about their books, and then other students can refer back to them and read that book that that student has recommended. All right, the third way that you can cultivate a classroom community of readers is to have a classroom book awards ceremony. I love this idea. It's kind of similar to the critics corner, but it focuses on the books that you guys have read together as a class. So your read aloud any anchor text that you use. It has to be books that all students have read or listen to, maybe even in there listening center, because they all have to know what the book is about, and how it works is throughout the month when you're reading several books, keep track of those books, maybe even create a binner basket where you create where you keep the books that you've read together, and then you're going to think about categories that thes BookScan fit into. So funniest books, books with the most interesting characters books with the most surprising endings. You could even kind of tie it into the skills that you've been teaching. So, for example, if you've been teaching how to write in interesting lead in the story, maybe you have a category for the book with the most interesting lead that you've used to model this skill so you can tie it into your curriculum as much as you can. So once you come up with the categories, you're going to create a ballot form that students are going to cast their vote on and they're gonna you're gonna have all the categories listed, and the students are gonna pick one book from each category. Then you tally up all the votes and you have an awards ceremony and students love it. You can have envelopes for each category, and you invite students to kind of present the award and reveal the winner to the class. You can even have a picture of the book cover in the envelope and then use those pictures to kind of create a display in your classroom. So there you have it. Three simple ways that you can create a stronger community of readers by just doing a few simple strategies in your classroom. Let's review them real quick one more time. The first way is to create a recommended book, Been in Your Classroom, where students place the books that they've read and recommend to their classmates. The second way is a critics quarter, and you are going to host a weekly or monthly or quarterly critics corner session where several students will give a review on the books that they have read independently. And then thirdly, you can have a class book awards where students celebrate the books that you have read together as a whole class and your read aloud, and they vote on their favorite book within a certain category. All right, I hope you can use one of those ideas in your classroom soon. And for all of the details about the things that we've discussed in this episode, you can go over to classroom nook dot com forward slash podcast florid slash one just the number one So all of the show notes to be right there waiting for you. And I can't wait to carpool with you again next week. Take care.

speaker 0:   10:23
The first way that you can cultivate a community of readers is by having a "Recommended Book Bin" in your classroom. So it's basically what it sounds like. You're going to have, some sort of bin or basket in your classroom that's big enough to hold several books, and you're gonna label it "Recommended Books" or top reads or whatever it is that you and your students come up with. You're gonna have that bin somewhere in your classroom library that's easily accessible. And when a student is done reading a book that they read during independent reading time or even in your guided reading groups, they can recommend it to somebody else outside of their reading group. And they're basically just gonna take that book and they're gonna put it in the recommended book bin.  They can put a little sticky note on the outside that says, recommended by: __________ Or perhaps they have someone in mind that they want to recommend it to. They could put their name on that sticky note.  However you want to organize it. But essentially, it's just a collection of books that have been pre-approved by their peers.  And a student who sees this pre-approved book is gonna be more likely to want to pick it out, especially for those reluctant readers who spend their entire time during readers workshop just trying to pick a book, you can send them to the recommended book bin and say, "Hey, these books have already been read by your classmates. They love them. See if you can find one that you might like as well."  So that's number one: A Recommended Book Bin.  We're talking five minutes prep and then let your students do the work.The 2nd idea that I have to share with you. The second tip is called Critics Corner. Do you remember that TV show that was on, I think in the mid nineties, maybe even early two thousands, the movie critic show by Siskel and Ebert, and they would give their two thumbs up or two thumbs down for the movies that were being newly released. Well, that's where I got this idea for my classroom. And I called it Critics Corner. And I'm sure you've seen a variety of, um, ways that this is kind of played out in the classroom, but this is just my kind of take on it. So essentially, what's gonna happen if students are going to read their own books? And then as they complete the book, they can sign up to appear on Critics Corner and to be on the critics corner show Or however you want to call it, they complete this review and I would provide a guided script for students who needed it and some some didn't. But especially at the beginning, when you're first starting this out in your classroom, you might want to provide some sort of guided script and essentially, students to share their favorite things about the book, things that surprise them and anything else that they might want to share about the characters or the events. And then each critic, I'm using quotes right now for critic. Each critic would give their final rating of the book two thumbs up, two thumbs down. However, they want to kind of rate that book, and you can do this on a monthly basis, a weekly basis. We would try to do ours on Friday afternoons, a CZ, much as we could. You might find that that's a little too often, but depending on the age, your students. But you find a schedule that works for you, and then when you're having your monthly or weekly or quarterly critics corner, you just invite a few students to review their books in front of the class, and then you can allow other students to respond and ask questions about the review, You can have a really fun chair that they sit in or where a funky had our glasses and share their review with the students. And it's such a great motivator for students because everybody wants to be on Critics Corner. Once you started, you can also have a bulletin board in your classroom where you display the reviews that students are writing about their books, and then other students can refer back to them and read that book that that student has recommended. All right, the third way that you can cultivate a classroom community of readers is to have a classroom book awards ceremony. I love this idea. It's kind of similar to the critics corner, but it focuses on the books that you guys have read together as a class. So your read aloud any anchor text that you use. It has to be books that all students have read or listen to, maybe even in there listening center, because they all have to know what the book is about, and how it works is throughout the month when you're reading several books, keep track of those books, maybe even create a binner basket where you create where you keep the books that you've read together, and then you're going to think about categories that thes BookScan fit into. So funniest books, books with the most interesting characters books with the most surprising endings. You could even kind of tie it into the skills that you've been teaching. So, for example, if you've been teaching how to write in interesting lead in the story, maybe you have a category for the book with the most interesting lead that you've used to model this skill so you can tie it into your curriculum as much as you can. So once you come up with the categories, you're going to create a ballot form that students are going to cast their vote on and they're gonna you're gonna have all the categories listed, and the students are gonna pick one book from each category. Then you tally up all the votes and you have an awards ceremony and students love it. You can have envelopes for each category, and you invite students to kind of present the award and reveal the winner to the class. You can even have a picture of the book cover in the envelope and then use those pictures to kind of create a display in your classroom. So there you have it. Three simple ways that you can create a stronger community of readers by just doing a few simple strategies in your classroom. Let's review them real quick one more time. The first way is to create a recommended book, Been in Your Classroom, where students place the books that they've read and recommend to their classmates. The second way is a critics quarter, and you are going to host a weekly or monthly or quarterly critics corner session where several students will give a review on the books that they have read independently. And then thirdly, you can have a class book awards where students celebrate the books that you have read together as a whole class and your read aloud, and they vote on their favorite book within a certain category. All right, I hope you can use one of those ideas in your classroom soon. And for all of the details about the things that we've discussed in this episode, you can go over to classroom nook dot com forward slash podcast florid slash one just the number one So all of the show notes to be right there waiting for you. And I can't wait to carpool with you again next week. Take care.