India Rowe's December Blog Post: Routman (2003) Chapter 3: Share Your Reading Life

In this chapter, Routman emphasizes the importance of sharing your personal reading habits with your students.  I think this is a wonderful way to allow students to see real-life connections with reading.  By modeling for the students how I choose the books that I am reading and how I read various texts across different genres, a classroom reading culture is established where students can then share their methods for choosing books and gain further insight into their own reading habits.  I thought it was interesting that the author found that the most common answers for why teachers place a high importance on reading involved learning and school-related responses.  Reading for pleasure is usually not mentioned.  My goal for my students is that they not only read for information, but also that they develop a love of reading that extends long after they leave my classroom.  Routman states, “…that if they (students) don’t read for pleasure they are not likely to make reading a lifelong habit or goal” (Routman, 2003, p. 24). 

            I like the idea of maintaining my own reading record of the books that I am reading each month.  Not only is it a great model for my students, it will also give me the opportunity to know myself better as a reader.  In fourth grade, students keep track of the various genres they are reading on a reading quilt.  It motivates them to try to read different genres that they may have been hesitant to read before.  It would be interesting to share my reading record with my students in order to build a classroom community where we could encourage each other to read texts across genres.