How to Apply The Book Whisperer: Awakening the Inner Reader in Every Child
Why free choice reading beats every program schools have ever bought
About This Book
A sixth-grade teacher whose students read forty books a year, ace the state reading test without exception for four straight years, and still call reading their favorite part of the day. Donalyn Miller has no PhD and no research lab, only a classroom that works for children of non-English-speaking immigrants and children of college professors alike. Inside, you will meet the strong reader nobody worries about who is secretly starving for attention, find out why a signed reading log can make children lie to their parents, and discover a reading requirement so high it should have failed the moment she announced it.About the Author
Donalyn Miller taught sixth-grade language arts and social studies in Texas after an earlier career as a bookkeeper in hotel and restaurant management. Her students have not failed the state reading assessment in four years, with an average of eighty-five percent scoring in the state's commended range. Her reputation for motivating students to read enormous numbers of books led teachermagazine.org to invite her to answer reader questions in its 'Ask the Mentor' column and later to write the long-running blog 'The Book Whisperer,' from which this book grew.
Biggest Takeaway
You will stop mistaking activity for reading and start noticing whether a book is actually landing with someone. You will learn how to match a struggling reader to a book that rebuilds their confidence instead of another worksheet, how to reclaim minutes already hiding inside your day for reading, and how to spot the quietly gifted reader your curriculum is ignoring. You will trade tools that measure compliance, like logs and point-based incentives, for conversations that reveal what someone actually got from a book. Whether you teach a classroom or just want your own child or yourself to read more, you will know exactly what to change tomorrow.
Key Insights from This Book
Explore the most important ideas and learn how to apply them in your life.
The reading fix that beats every program money can buy
The kids who need reading practice most often get the least of it
The strongest readers in a classroom often get the least attention of all
A boy who refused to read forty books proved the fix wasn't more rules
The lesson so carefully planned it turned a great book into drudgery
Why some teachers can't inspire the very habit they're demanding
The twenty extra minutes hiding inside a day nobody plans for
Why writing down that you read is not the same as reading
A reading requirement so high it should have failed and somehow worked
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