1. Creating Lifelong
Readers
Giving students choice
in the books they read
Beth Shaum
St. Paul Catholic School
Grosse Pointe Farms, MI
bethshaum@gmail.com
Twitter: @FoodieBooklvr

2. A Story…

3. What are we doing in our classrooms to cause
students to hate reading?
 Assigning books they don’t connect with
 Assigning one book for a whole class of
students with disparate reading abilities
 Showing that the only value in reading
is when someone assigns it

4. Why choice?
 Meets students where they’re at, not where I
expect them to be
 Moves students up their personal ladder of
reading (Lesesne, 2010)
 Lifelong readers create lifelong learners
 Empowers students with autonomy, mastery
and purpose (Pink, 2009)

5. Why choice?
 Autonomy – the desire to
direct our own lives
 Mastery – the urge to
make progress and get
better at something
 Purpose – the yearning to
do what we do in service of
something larger than
ourselves (Pink, 2009)

6. Why choice?

7. Criticisms of choice
 Surely students can’t learn the skills
they need without shared reading
experiences.
 Students need The Classics!
 How do students gain cultural capital by
not reading “great works of literature”
with a knowledgeable teacher?

8. Criticism: Students need shared
reading experiences
 Limit number of whole class texts, don’t
eliminate them entirely
– Adopt a 50/50 approach: 50% choice, 50%
assigned reading (Gallagher, 2009)
 Read alouds
– When did this only become important to
elementary students? “Big kids” need models of
good reading too!
 Short stories & poems
– Learn literary elements through short pieces of
text and have students apply these elements to
their personal reading

9. Example: literature theme notebooks

10. Criticism: Students need The
Classics!
 Use the 50/50 approach
 Students won’t appreciate and respond
to The Classics unless teachers show
they respect students’ own reading
choices
 Classics were not written with teens in
mind – there are just as many great
literary, contemporary YA titles
teachers can use as there are classic
texts

11. Non-exhaustive list of contemporary,
literary YA writers you can use in
addition to classics:
 Suzanne Collins
 Laurie Halse  M.T. Anderson
Anderson
 Laini Taylor
 Kenneth Oppel  Maggie Stiefvater
 John Green  Markus Zusak
 Lauren Oliver  Jennifer Donnelly
 Libba Bray  Patrick Ness
 A.S. King  Jacqueline Woodson
 Elizabeth Wein  Chris Crutcher
 Jay Asher  Angela Johnson

12. Choice does not have to be a free-
for-all
Example of
the genre
requirement
form I use
with my 6th
graders

13. “You don’t have to burn books to destroy
culture. Just get people to stop reading
them.” – Ray Bradbury
 Is this what we’re doing to our kids?

14. It’s not rocket science…

15. …and they all lived happily ever
after?
Beth Shaum
St. Paul Catholic School
Grosse Pointe Farms, MI
bethshaum@gmail.com
Twitter: @FoodieBooklvr

16. References and Works Cited
Gallagher, K. (2009). Readicide how schools are killing reading and what
you can do about it. Portland, Me.: Stenhouse Publishers.
Kittle, P. (2011). Penny Kittle – Reading Workshop Handouts. Penny Kittle.
Retrieved October 6, 2012, from
http://www.pennykittle.net/uploads/pdf/ReadingWorkshophandouts.pdf
Lesesne, T. S. (2010). Reading ladders: leading students from where they
are to where we'd like them to be. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.
Miller, D. (2009). The book whisperer: awakening the inner reader in every
child. San Francisco, Calif.: Jossey-Bass.
Pink, D. H. (2009). Drive: the surprising truth about what motivates us. New
York, NY: Riverhead Books.