The Book Whisperer by Donalyn Miller, Jeff Anderson Read Free Book Online Page A

texts like books, articles, and textbooks, designing every lesson around the skills that readers really need to develop reading proficiency.
    â€¢ Expectations: Students will rise to the level of a teacher’s expectations. I expect my students to read every day and to read a large volume of books. Not only do I have high expectations for reading, I have high expectations for students’ success. They are never given messages, either explicitly or implicitly, that I do not think they can accomplish any reading task.
    â€¢ Responsibility: Students need to make at least some of their own choices when pursuing learning goals. Cambourne states, “Learners who lose the ability to make choices become disempowered.” I set reading requirements for my students at a certain number of books per genre, but students have the freedom to choose which books they will read in order to fulfill the requirements.
    â€¢ Employment: Students need time to practice what they are learning in the context of realistic situations. Every single lesson that I teach circles back to students’ own reading, and students are given time daily to apply the skills they acquire to their own books, content-area reading, and research assignments.
    â€¢ Approximations: Students need to receive encouragement for the skills and knowledge they do have and be allowed to make mistakes as they work toward mastery. I help students find books that are at their own reading level, even if it is below grade level, and publicly celebrate each reader’s accomplishments as he or she moves toward more mature reading ability.
    â€¢ Response: Students need nonthreatening, immediate feedback on their progress. By holding frequent conferences, requiring written response letters about their books, and discussing students’ reading with them daily, I am continually providing encouragement, guidance, and validation for their reading development.
    â€¢ Engagement: Even with all of the other conditions in place, engagement is the most important condition for learning and must exist in a successful classroom. Reading must be an endeavor that
    â€¢ Has personal value to students: Do students see a reason to read outside of the need to do so for school? Do students find any enjoyment in reading, or is it just a job?
    â€¢ Students see themselves as capable of doing: Do students see themselves as readers or nonreaders? Are they discouraged by reading failure in the past? Do they see themselves as able to learn to read well?
    â€¢ Is free from anxiety: Is reading weighted down with so many requirements for performance that reading is connected in students’ minds with an obstacle course of work and, therefore, with stress? Have students been punished for not meeting mandates for reading at school?
    â€¢ Is modeled by someone they like, respect, trust, and want to emulate: Does the teacher model reading habits in his or her life? Do students respect the teacher as someone knowledgeable about reading? Has the teacher communicated to students that he or she sees students as capable enough to make some learning decisions?
    I no longer spend the majority of my planning time crafting those glorious novel units. Instead, I focus my efforts on designing a classroom environment that engages my students, based on Cambourne’s conditions for learning. We can spend hours determining what students should know and be able to do, crafting instruction to accomplish the desired results, but without considering students’ right to an engaging, trustworthy, risk-free place in which to learn, what we teach will always fall short. Students must believe that they can read and that reading is worth learning how to do well. We have to build a community that embraces every student and provides acceptance and encouragement no matter where students are on the reading curve.
    WHISPER
    Student Surveys
    SIGHING, I SHUT MY DOOR at the end of the day and enjoy the