The Book Whisperer: Chapter 4 (With Reader's Notebook Resources)

The beginning of this chapter is the part of the book that really stuck out to me, and the part I will study before talking with my students about books at the beginning of the year.

Miller begins the chapter talking about a discussion she leads at the beginning of the school year. A discussion about how readers choose books. Miller comments that students begin giving her answers that "they think I want to hear." They look at the cover of the book, they read series that they like, they read books recommended by friends and family. 

Miller states that the students will not admit certain strategies  for choosing books because they consider it "cheating." So Miller states, "Who has chosen a book because it is short? Who has chosen a book to read by checking how long it is?" She communicates to the students that it is okay! That is when students begin opening up about how they really choose a book. They read easy books, they read books they have already read, they read the ending first then decide if the book is worthy, they just read a certain genre they know they enjoy. I can't wait to have this discussion with my own class in order to communicate to them that it does not matter why you chose the book, just that you actually picked it up and began reading.

Miller also addresses what to do with a student who makes a negative comment during this important discussion. When one of her students comments that books are boring, Miller responds with, "I am so glad that you said that! Some books are boring." She then goes on to describe a book that she considered boring. I think that this was so powerful! I love to read, but even I run across books that I think are boring and I ultimately abandon them. 

This discussion leads to her empowering her students to make their own book choices. She then shares with students "The Rights of the Reader," by Daniel Pennac. 

Miller goes on to explain why she requires her students to read forty books. She states that this high expectation communicates to students that she will not accept just a book or two. She helps students who are not confident that they will be able to meet the requirement by helping them pick the next book. She is vague when asked what will happen if they do not meet the requirement. However, she then states that there are not negative consequences for not meeting the goal. She comments, "After all, if a student reads twenty-two books in a school year (the fewest any of my students has ever read), who could take issue with that?"

Miller also provides students with suggested genres to help them to be more focused on the forty-book requirement. She states that the genres are not set in stone and they often change each year. She also states that she has had students that do not read the different genres. She attempts to catch their interest with other genres, but some are not interested and she drops it and lets them read what they enjoy. The requirements listed in the book include:

• Poetry   5
• Traditional literature   5
• Realistic Fiction   5
• Historical Fiction   2
• Fantasy   4
• Science Fiction   2
• Mystery   2
• Informational   4
• Biography, Autobiography, memoir   2
• Chapter-book Choice   9

Requiring a certain number of books does come with some challenges. Developing and dormant readers would select short books. Also, students who normally enjoyed larger books went to shorter ones in fear of not reaching forty books. Miller solved this by allowing books that were over a certain number of pages count as two books. 

This was a long chapter, but those were the things that stuck out the most to me. Miller continues with the chapter by discussing how she encourages students to read, how she uses read alouds, her genre unit to teach students aspects of different genres, and how she uses reader's notebooks.

Here are some resources I found on reader's notebooks that are based on Miller's ideas:

This post on Cortez Corner discusses how this elementary school teacher uses reader's notebooks. It also comes with a link to a document with pages that can go in your students' notebooks.

This Document by Donalyn Miller gives you steps on how to set up your students' notebooks.