“Make sure you do some sort of home reading log,” another teacher reminded me as she headed out the door of my room during classroom set up right before my first year of teaching third grade. “We want them reading every night. You can have them write the title, author, page numbers, and a summary of their reading.”
I did this for years. I adjusted and fine tuned my reading log and I was pretty proud of it….until the end of the week when I constantly had students rifiling through their lockers for their crumpled reading log and quickly scrawling their “fake reading” in the blanks.
It was such a burden for me to track down the kids who hadn’t filled it out, who’s parents had filled it out, or who lost it yet again! I knew people were not being honest and I fielded a LOT of complaints from parents.
Parents were saying that their kids were reading, but HATED filling out the logs. They felt that the logs ruined their child’s love of reading and were a huge drag to complete.
After several of these complaints, I thought back to when I was younger and how much I HATED doing nightly reading logs. This made me wonder “why am I doing this to my kids?” So I STOPPED!
I DITCHED THE READING LOG! I did it! It was gone! No more!
But then I was left with a problem. In my experience, if I suggest something such as nightly reading, my students will do it for a little while but then it will fall to the wayside.
- I decided I needed a way to still make reading nightly a requirement (because it is SOOOOO important).
- I needed to keep reading fun.
- I needed to help encourage my students to try different types of reading.
- I needed some way to remind them that their nightly reading was IMPORTANT to me…their teacher.
I was headed on vacation several years ago when the solution to my problem hit me. I had an idea to create a monthly BINGO type board. In each box I put a fun or creative way to read. Spaces like “read in the bathtub” or “read to your dog” encourage students to choose a fun way to read each night. I tried to include different genres, opportunities to practice their oral reading fluency, and more.
You could do this in your classroom. Think about the different things your students love to do. Thing about the genres they like to read. Think about the genres you would like them to check out. Think about interesting places they could read around their house. Include some oral reading speace. Try creating a few spaces that involve movement. Definitely include a few silly spaces. Once you create a grid with some different reading options on it be sure to include how many days you would like them to read, and how long you would like to read each night. Many school district have a recommended (or required) number of minutes.
I love to use Powerpoint to create something like this because I can create the template and then use the “duplicate slide” feature to make different board for different months. If you go to the “insert” tab, you can insert a table and choose a 5 x 5 grid. Then once you get that looking the way you want, you can type in your reading ideas. Once you finish, just insert text boxes for the BINGO letters.
At the start of each month I fold and tape a new monthly reading BINGO board into the front of their homework notebook (but I have seen people tape them into folders, binders, etc). As students complete the requirement they cross of one box at a time, until they have completed the BINGO board. When I create mine, I use a 5 x 5 grid. There are a total of 25 spaces (one is the FREE space), so I require 24 nights of reading for the month. They need to read 15 minutes per night in third grade.
With my students, we talk a lot about planning out the week. I tell my students, “If you have dance on Wednesday nights, take off Wednesday nights. If you have soccer on Fridays, take off Fridays.” This is an introduction to time management and it really works! Students come into school and share their plans with me.
While I know that students can “fake” this record of their reading, I also know that those students who do the reading are happier and enjoy their reading more than when they had to go through the monotony of logging their reading in a reading log every night.
I would love to see some of the BINGO boards that you and your class create! Please share them with me! If you don’t have time to make your own, please feel free to use these ones that I made. Hopefully these will save you some time! I have also recently created a digital version that you can grab here (or I have a bundle if you want to have both options).
I hope that you are able to break up with the tradition Readng Logs and try something new. Think about keeping the “Love of Reading” at the forefront of your decision making. Good luck! I hope your students enjoy their reading this year!
Cheers!
~Heather
