It’s Time For an “Epic” Vacation
For the last several years, we have had to shift our instruction and adapt to new ways of doing things due to Covid-19. It is truly unbelievable to look back and see how the entire world of education was able to shift in a matter of days. Some great things came from the shift but there have also been some detrimental things. We now have to reflect on what has worked well and what needs to change.
As I have been in classrooms over the last few years, one of the biggest changes I have seen is children not reading hardcopy books. Covid made us shut down classroom library, keep everyone distant from one another, placed limits on materials, and more. All of these things were requirements but over the last few years post-Covid have shown to be detrimental to our students’ love of reading. I met with a group of second grade teachers last week and one of the things they kept coming back to in our conversations was the fact that a majority of their students don’t like to read. They look at it as something they have to do or a chore. This broke my heart. These teachers are phenomenal educators so I knew the loss of love for reading was not coming from them. It is coming from our current situation. The good news is, we can change this.
When I became a classroom teacher, I remember the excitement of buying books for my classroom library. Many of the books I bought for my classroom library were specifically chosen because they were some of my favorites growing up. I was so excited to have copies of The Mouse and the Motorcycle, Charlotte’s Web, Amelia Bededia, Frog and Toad, Miss Piggle Wiggle, Boxcar Children, Nancy Drew, and many more. As a child, I fell in love with the characters in these books. They felt like old friends by the time I purchased them for my own classroom.
There was a sense of nostalgia and comfort knowing these books were going to be in the hands of my students so that they too could fall in love with the same characters as I did when I was their age.
My classroom library was the best place in my classroom. It was full of baskets of books, high-interest books, nonfiction books organized by topics, favorite series, etc. I had comfy chairs, lamps, a big rug, and stuffed animals of favorite book characters that could be used as reading buddies. I also had student written book reviews scattered around the library so if students were stuck on what kind of book they were looking for, they had some ideas from their peers. The classroom library was everyone’s favorite place in our room!
What I have noticed over the last few years going into classrooms is less emphasis on classroom libraries and more emphasis on one-to-one devices with apps for online books. There have been classrooms that I have walked in where there isn’t a classroom library to be found. In my opinion, a classroom library should be a “must” in every room. Children need access to books. It would surprise some people the amount of children that do not have books at home. They need to see that books have an important place in our everyday lives.
There are times that I enjoy listening to a book on audible or reading a book on a Kindle, but there truly is nothing better than going into a bookstore and pulling a brand new book off the shelf. The smell, the feel, the crisp pages…there’s nothing better! These are the things that we want our students to experience, too. It is important for them to have the same experience of “book shopping” off shelves in your classroom and finding a comfy spot to spend an extended period of time reading. This is how children learn to fall in love with reading. The only way to do this is to get back to creating spaces in our classrooms for libraries where children are engaging with hard copy books. We have to begin to limit the time they are spending online browsing for books, watching videos instead of reading, etc. I am not saying throw everything out the window but we should be limiting their time on devices. The younger the child, the more limits need to be placed because they are developing critical reading skills that will lay the foundation for their reading lives. The things they learn in hardcopy books cannot always be replicated when reading on a screen: directionality, one-to-one, turning pages left to right, starting a book from the front cover and reading to the end, locating the table of contents, glossary and index, and much more! The devices have done their job but now it is time to get back to what we know is best for kids. It’s also hard to fall in love with an electronic book.
From now until the end of the school year, let’s challenge ourselves as teachers to take an “Epic” vacation (If you don’t know, Epic is an online book app many educators use). Let’s put down the devices and get hardcopy books into children’s hands. It isn’t too late in the year. It’s never too late. Find a few favorites, share the books with your students, talk about your own connections/memories to each book, and watch the excitement begin to bubble up in your classroom. Give your students the best gift you can give them, the gift of loving to read. It is a gift that will last a lifetime and what better time to give them the greatest gift than right before summer break. Happy Reading! -Hope
