Building a Community of Readers – the Sticky Note data activity
My main goal as a reading teacher is to inspire a love of reading in my students. If I can do that successfully, the rest will take care of itself. Voracious readers become competent readers, although the reverse is not always true. If you haven’t read Donalyn Miller’s The Book Whisperer, you should. She’s a master at helping kids love reading.
As a teacher, the only daily homework I require is 20 minutes of reading a night. I’ve tried every type of reading log imaginable – daily slips with daily reinforcement at school, weekly logs, monthly logs, points systems, computerized tests…. You name it, I’ve tried it! And guess what? The kids who read at home in September are still reading at home in June, and the kids who weren’t reading in September were seldom motivated to read by any system I could impose.
So, I don’t use reading logs anymore. Instead, I’ve implemented some simple activities to build motivation and interest in reading. One of those is the Sticky Note data activity. I use it a lot, especially at the beginning of the year.
It’s pretty simple. Students will walk into class and find a blank sticky note on their desks. They know that we will start our day, every day, with at least 30 minutes of Independent Reading. As they filter in the door, I ask them to write the title of the book they read at home on a sticky, and not to put their name on the sticky. This is NOT about embarrassing kids, so it’s anonymous. If they didn’t read at home, they write Nothing on the sticky.
After their Independent Reading time, I call them to the rug and ask them to put their sticky on the board. We then organize the sticky notes, usually by genre at the beginning of the year since I’m working to build their understanding of different genre. We then have a data talk about their sticky notes. Sometimes, I turn it into a math activity and ask them to organize the data in a graph or line plot. Sometimes I ask them to create questions that can be asked and answered using the data. And sometimes we just discuss our noticings and questions.
This super simple, quick activity is motivating to many students. Don’t use it every day, once or twice a week is better. That gives students time to finish books so the data changes.
You can also vary the question. Other things I might have them write on their sticky are:
- Where did you read at home last night (or this morning)?
- When was the last time you read at home?
- Who do you like to read with at home?
- Are you reading fiction or non-fiction at home right now?
- How long did you read at home last night (or this morning)?
Once the data is organized, I snap a quick picture of the board, and I send it to parents. Key to helping students read at home is getting parents on board, and a picture is worth 1,000 words!
