Our New Year's Eve Reading Resolutions Party

Yesterday was the kind of day that makes weekend nights hunched over a stack of essays worth it. I had a great time celebrating reading with your kids; if they had one quarter the amount of fun I had, we’ll consider it a big success.

It wasn’t just meaningless fun, though. As I told the kids, the day was intended to be a party with a purpose.  My main purpose was to have every kid identify a reading goal or resolution for next semester. As the day went on, I discovered that most resolutions were falling into three categories:

• ​Quantity:  Many students made goals to read more outside of school. I encouraged them to make that committment concrete. An hour a week? 10 minutes five days a week? A certain number of books by the end of the year?  I’ll be following up with those kids all semester and trying to help them hold themselves accountable to that goal.
• Purpose: Other students made resolutions about reading more for fun. They explained they do reading when it’s assigned, but they put little effort into finding books they actually enjoy. I’ll be encouraging those students to ask for recommendations and try lots of different genres.
• ​​Quality: A third group of students made resolutions related to the type of reading they do.  They recognize that they’re reading the same types of books over and over. That’s not necessarily bad--I’m happy they’ve found something they love!--but it’s nice to see that they’re interested in expanding their horizons. I’ll work with those students on finding a new favorite genre. 

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I took pictures of all of the kids with their reading resolutions--we added some festive costumes to keep it fun. I am going to print and post all of those pictures in the classroom to help us keep those resolutions in mind as we move into second semester. There are a few pictures at the bottom of this post to give you an idea of what we were up to.

What can you do to help support these awesome resolutions?

Ask your students about the resolutions they made and then help them figure out how they’ll begin tackling it! Maybe they need to come ask me for recommendations or perhaps they can check with Mrs. Bratney, our high school librarian, for some help.

Explore some titles with your students! I like to imagine that my kids (ages 3 and 6) will want me to read to them every night until they go to college. Your kids assure me that that’s not going to happen. BUT...it might be cool to read the same book and chat about it. Maybe you could make a reading resolution of your own!

Here are a few lists of great suggestions:

• 100 Books That Will Make You More Interesting:  A really interesting list shared with me by a parent that has inspired some of my own selections this year.
• 100 Best Young Adult Books of All Time:  I haven’t read all of these, but I’ve read quite a few. There are lots of different topics, different reading levels, and types of writing represented on this list. Some are books that your students likely read in middle or elementary school ,but there are a lot on there that are certainly high school appropriate.

    Happy Reading and Happy New Year!


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