Have you ever noticed that you tend to read the same genre(s) over and over? How can you get your students to choose different types of books if you are not exposing them to different types of books?!
It is important for students to experience a variety of texts during the school year. When students are exposed to a variety of genres they have different reading experiences. This will help them find texts that they enjoy reading and therefore read more.
Use a Genre Wall
To monitor and vary the genres you read in your classroom, create a Genre Wall! I created one on the cabinets in my classroom, but you could definitely use a bulletin board or even a wall in your room. I leave up the headings from year to year and then print out book covers in color as we finish reading books together. I try to include read alouds, stories from our reading program, and even some picture books. This year I also added poetry. This has helped me monitor any genres that we have and haven’t read yet. As an awesome side effect, my students are constantly looking at the genre wall when we talk about books. They are using the different genre names more and they are better able to answer questions about genre. I highly recommend this!
I always thought that I shared some really great books with my students. I really felt like I mixed things up and tried to expose them to new and different things to read. I would scour the book orders or the local library sales in an effort to make sure I was offering the books that my students wanted to read.
This past year, I realized that my read alouds were almost always realistic fiction! I was switching genres, but instead, I was mixing up the type of realistic fiction (funny, serious, sad, etc). As a result, I have been trying to vary my texts accordingly. I use my genre wall to choose and plan texts that we will be reading as a class, with partners, and for book clubs.
Vary Genres Daily
I also have been using other parts of my day to expose my students to different genres. For morning work, we have been using these Daily Reading Practice passages every day. My students get to read a new text right after they unpack. Students work with the same text for two days (which promotes better reading fluency and comprehension).
One of the biggest things about these Daily Reading Practice passages is that I have been making a conscious effort to include so many types of texts as I create upcoming months! So far I have included realistic fiction, nonfiction, biography, poetry, plays/drama, nontraditional texts, and more! I hope you get a chance to check these out. You can check out the link for a FREEBIE of some of these texts below.
This week there are two FREEBIES! The first is a set of Genre Labels to that you can easily print a set and create your own Genre Wall! Grab these in the Free Resource Library.
Here is the second FREEBIE this week. Click and grab a sample of the Daily Reading Practice resource here! This will give you a chance to try these out with your class and see if they are a good fit. If you love them, you can get the whole growing bundle here.
I also just listed February’s passages which focus on Plays/Dramas which will be 50% off for the next 48 hours. I’d LOVE to hear how your class likes them! Have a great week!
~Heather Johnson 33
