when numbahs don’t lie (2016-7).
Students can’t be reduced to a number. They can’t be defined by their results on a common assessment, reduced to where they fall on a state test, nor limited by their SAT/ACT scores.
However, sometimes numbers don’t lie.
With a towering goal of helping students fall back (or, for a select few, remain) in love with reading–while building their stamina to endure the 600-pages-per-week of reading they’ll be asked to do in college, I need numbers. They help validate what I do in the classroom (e.g., allow students to choose the majority of their texts, begin every class with 10 minutes of reading, use Goodreads for goal-setting, tracking, and review-publishing, maintain a classroom library).
So, at the end of every year, I ask students to tally how many books they read–cover-to-cover during our time together and compare it to what they read the year before.
The. Results. Are. Glorious.
In a world of SparkNotes, Fake Reading, and Beating the System, check out the growth of these amazing, authentic (and hopefully lifelong) readers! It’ll warm your soul.
Last Year’s Total: 55 Books; This Year’s Total: 189 Books!
beth hughes.
I’m a tech-loving, high school English teacher out to woo my students back to bibliophilia through authentic, real-world tasks. Even with two decades of teaching under my belt, there’s so much left to learn.
WHERE OTHERS GO
THE LIFELONG LEARNER 