Celebrating Our Reading Year

Another school year has wrapped up with one of my favorite days...book tally day! I work very hard to help my students increase their reading stamina, volume, motivation, and engagement when they are with me, and at the end of the year, we celebrate the reading we have done. I don't ask my students to do anything I'm not willing to do myself, so we all keep track of the books we read throughout the year.

I did it this way: 

One of my favorite days of the year involves us celebrating our reading year by creating signs to show off the number of books we read for the whole school year. It's one of my favorites because I invariably have students who, although they've been keeping track all year, when it comes time to write that number to show off, realize just how much they've really read, and that it's much more than they ever could have imagined. As my students were making their signs, I heard comments like, "I can't believe I read that many books!" "I read way more than the 40 you challenged us to read!" "I read 30 more books this year than last year!" "I'm going to read even more next year!"

The first step to helping students develop into stronger readers is to get them reading. A lot. My 7th & 8th graders do that. Here's the record of our success and celebration.