The+Reading+Zone

__ The Reading Zone __ // How to Help Kids Become Skilled, Passionate, Habitual, Critical Readers // // by Nancie Atwell // // September Reading Survey // 1. If you had to guess... How many books would you say you owned? __________________________ How many books would you say you've read since school let out in June? ______________________ How many books would you say are in your house? _________________________ How many books would you say you read during the last school year, Sept.-June? _______________ How many of those books did you choose for yourself? ____________ 2. What are the best three books you've ever read or had read aloud to you? _________________________________________________________ _________________________________________________________  _________________________________________________________  3. In your ideal book, what could the main character be like? _________________________________________________________ _________________________________________________________  _________________________________________________________  4. What are your favorite genres, or kinds, of books? _________________________________________________________ 5. Who are your favorite authors these days? _________________________________________________________ _________________________________________________________  6. What are some of the ways you decide whether or not you'll read a book? _________________________________________________________ _________________________________________________________  _________________________________________________________  7. Have you ever liked a book so much that you reread it? ____________ If so, can you name it?

8. What do you think someone has to know or do in order to be a strong, satisfied reader of books? _________________________________________________________ _________________________________________________________  _________________________________________________________  9. What would you like to improve on as a reader? ______________________________________ _________________________________________________________  10. Do you know the title of the next book you'd like to read? ___________ If so, please tell me. _________________________________________________________ 11. In general, how do you feel about reading and yourself as a reader? _________________________________________________________ _________________________________________________________  _________________________________________________________  _________________________________________________________  WRITING ABOUT READING: SOME OPENERS I liked the way the author.... I noticed how the author...  I don't get why the author...  If I were the author I would have...  I'd compare this author to ...  This book reminded me of ...  The main character...  The character development ...  The narrative voice...  The structure of this book...  The climax of the plot...  The resolution of the main character's problem...  The genre of this book is...  I'd say a theme of this book is...  I wish that...  I didn't agree with ...  I understood ...  I couldn't understand...  Why did...  This is how I read this book: I rated this one ____ because EXPECTATIONS for READING this YEAR * Read as much as you can, as youfully as you can. * Read at home for at least 15 minutes every day, seven days a week. * Find books, authors, subjects, themes, and genres that matter to you, your life, who you are now, and who you might become. *Try new books, authors, subjects, purposes, and genres. Expand your knowledge, your experience, and your apprecication of literature. *Write a ltter-essay once every three wekks about what you noticed and appreciated about a book you've finished. Use writing to go back inside a book and consider the writing you read - how the book made you think and feel, what the author did, what worked, what needs more work. *Recognize that there are different approaches to reading and different stances readers take in relation to different texts - for example, contemporary realistic fiction is different from a poem, which is different from a chapter in your history book, which is fferent from a newspaper editorial. *Develop and articulate your own criteria for selecting and adandoning books. *Establish and work toward significant goals for yourself as a reader. *Engage and respond with your whole heart and mind when you read. Enter the reading zone and stretch your imagination, live other lives and learn about your own, find prose and poetry so well written it knocks you out, experience and understand problems and feelings you might never know, find stories that make you happy and feed your soul, consider how writers have written and why, acquire their knowledge, ask questions, escape,think, travel, ponder, laugh, cry, love and grow up. page 121