Bestsellers

The English Department at our school, I’m glad to say, tries to assign books that will be fun to read. (A) Allan Toil, teacher Perhaps, my favorite choice of all time was Laura Hillenbrand’s Seabiscuit. We knew the kids would eat it up, and they did. It was assigned to juniors,and they read it in great numbers. On the day of their orientation, I overheard one student telling another that he had not read it. The second boy demanded that the first boy read this “awesome” book. On the testing day I overheard him telling another student what a great book Seabiscuit was and how he had read it in one night—on a weekend! (B) Jane Smith, retired teacher After school, I was reading aloud the first chapter of White Fang and recording it for my eighth graders. I stopped when one of my students told me he did not want to read White Fang .When I had finished reading this story , I shut off the recorder and looked up. Shane was completely amazed by this story. (C) Carry Brown, volunteer When I was volunteer at a library serving developmentally challenged kids, I added comic books to our library — in spite of our lack of a budget. The older kids were grateful for the pictorial versions of books they’d been encouraged to read. Overall, however, the mad rush to the comic-book section of the library was motivated mostly by the latest Spider-Man movie! (D) Joan Stream, librarian Over the years, I have struggled to find ways to engage reluctant readers when traditional methods have failed . I started to look for ways to use technology to encourage reading. We had noticed that many students enjoyed being videotaped when presenting reports in the classroom; my colleague therefore suggested that we use this interest to our advantage by videotaping students as they gave their book reports.