5 Ways to Get Your Students Reading to Boost Achievement!

Are your students reading 15 minutes a day? If not they should be! Research shows that 

reading for 15 minutes a day makes all the difference between a successful student and a struggling student. But why 15 minutes?

 

Importance of Reading

A study comparing the engaged reading time and reading scores of more than 2.2 million students found that students who were reading 15 minutes a day or more got a higher reading score than the national average. Growth in a student's reading skills only happens when that student reads for at least 15 minutes a day. 

In this same study it was found that students who read less than 5 minutes a day saw the lowest level of growth in their reading scores. Their scores were also well below the national reading average. Students who read between 5 and 14 minutes per day did a little better, but their scores were also below the national average. “15 minutes seems to be the ‘magic number’ at which students start seeing substantial positive gains in reading achievement.” Renaissance

 

Reading Linked to Student Success in School 

According to a study of the Programme of International Student Assessment (PISA) scores of over 174,000 students around the world, there is a connection between a student’s reading practice and performance. Talentnook

So what is the difference between a student who reads for less than 15 minutes a day and a student who reads for more than 30 minutes a day? It can’t be that big of a difference, right? Wrong. There is actually a huge difference. The difference is 12 million.

By the time a student graduates high school, a student reading for 30 minutes or more a day will encounter 13.7 million words. And the number of words their classmates who aren’t reading 15 minutes a day will encounter? 1.5 million words. It is so important that our students are reading 15 minutes per day because it will greatly impact their success and achievement in school. 

SO WHAT SHOULD YOU DO WITH THIS INFORMATION?!

1. Encourage Reading in Your Classroom, in any way or form.  

It is so important that we encourage our students to read. Some of the ways we can do this is to invite them to reread, or read it again and again. Rereading builds speed and accuracy and helps students gain confidence in their reading skills.

For our youngest readers, teaching them that reading the pictures is also a form of reading. This will help them to feel capable of reading and begin a love for reading at an early age.

2. Teach Students to Find Just Right Books

Teaching students to find books that are a good fit is also extremely important. If students are reading books that are too difficult for them and/or not of interest, that is surely a way to discourage them from wanting to read more. By teaching them how to properly shop for books, we can help to build that love of reading.

When teaching students to book shop, have them open up a book and read through a few paragraphs. Can they read and understand most of the words? Is it too easy? Does what they are reading interest them? Is the type of book interesting to them?

If so- this is a good fit. If not, they can return it and find a new one. I also like to let students know that it's totally okay to start a book and decide that you don't like it.

 3. Organize Your Class Library to Make Book Shopping Easy

 Let's be honest- finding books in a library are rather difficult if you are just browsing and don't have a specific author or title in mind. I believe it's important to organize your own classroom library so that it's easy for students to find books they love reading. We don't wan't students to get discouraged from reading because it's too difficult to find a book!

Book bins are a great way to keep books organized and the best thing about it is that students can pull a bin out and easily look through to find a book they like. Students often check out books by looking at their covers. They are much more likely to pull out a book if they can see the cover versus just the spine.

The other great thing I love about the bins is that you can choose different ways to organize your books to make book shopping easier for students. In my own classroom library, I had my books sorted out by popular chapter series, favorite authors, and genre. This way, students could stick to the books they love, discover new books by their favorite author or even explore new books in their favorite genres. You can grab my library book bin labels here.

 

 

4. Host a Book Drive 

Another great way to make books accessible to students is to host a book drive at your school!

If you have never heard of a book drive, it is where students bring in gently used books and swap them out for a new one. The great thing about a book drive is that it provides new books to students and also makes reading more accessible to those who may not have books at home. It also helps to encourage reading at home. I held one at my school a few years ago and it was a total hit!

 

To ensure book swap inventory stayed up, I required children to swap for the same type of book they brought in (chapter book for chapter book and picture book for picture book). To keep track, when kids came to give their books, they would get a colored ticket (indicating picture or chapter book). They could then choose however many books for the number of tickets they had. 

If you have any questions for me about hosting your own book swap, feel free to DM me over on Instagram @teachinginparadise. 

5. Make Time for Read Alouds, Daily

I know that as teachers, you are always strapped for time. However, research shows how important it is for students to be reading daily. By Incorporating read alouds into your school day you are modeling fluent reading for students, introducing them to new books and authors, and most importantly, helping them to find the joy in reading!

I love to use Read Alouds to introduce new concepts that we are learning about. It's a great way to throw in a fun picture book. 

In addition, during the month of December, we read 1 Christmas/Winter story a day. The kids are so excited and look forward to these daily holiday read alouds. You'd be surprised how many students are not read to at home on a daily basis. 

So, no matter how old your students are, they all love to be read to! I've seen 6th graders in our school library so excited to sit on the ground for our librarian to read to them!

If you're a 3rd grade teacher, get my list of favorite Gr.3 Read Alouds here.

As educators, we want to do all we can to ensure that our students are successful in school and later on in life. One of the best ways we can do this is to make books accessible and ensure that they are reading the magic number of 15 minutes a day.

 

Until next time.
Aloha,

Sources:

https://www.renaissance.com/2018/01/23/blog-magic-15-minutes-reading-practice-reading-growth/

https://talentnook.com/blog/the-15-minute-magic-elevate-your-childs-reading

11 Must Have Chapter Book Series in YOUR 3rd Grade Classroom

One of the best things about being a teacher is being able to stock your classroom up with great books for kids to read. In the early days of my career, I spent the weekends hunting down good deals to grow my class library. When I left my classroom, I easily had over 1,000 books in my class library! You can check this post out for ideas on how to grow your class library on a teacher budget!
Today I'll be sharing 11 Chapter Book Series that will surely be a hit in your 3rd Grade Classroom Library! **This post contains affiliate links

I Survived Series

Who Was and What is Series

The Boxcar Children 

Goosebumps

Rainbow Magic Series

Junie B. Jones

A-Z Mysteries

Magic Tree House Series

Diary of a Wimpy Kid

Dork Diaries

Who Would Win Series

If you're also interested in a list of Popular 3rd Grade Read Aloud Books, you can get that here! 
 Aloha,

Easiest Classroom Library Checkout System

If you're anything like me, I've changed my class library checkout system quite a bit over the years. I could never quite find something that worked well, that students followed through with and that was simple. 
Today, I've finally FORCED myself to sit down and write this post. I've been wanting to share my checkout system here on the blog for the past few years...but just haven't made the time to write a post. This is the simplest system EVER and I would never go back to any other system I've used before.

Traditional class library checkout systems didn't work for me for various reasons. One of the classic systems, placing a shelf maker in the spot you borrowed a book from did not work for me because I wanted my students checking multiple books out at one time.  I also tried having them fill out a class library log, but only a handful of students filled it out consistently and accurately. Not to mention, it was just too much of a headache to constantly monitor (especially that returned column).  The second best system that I had was when I used Classroom Booksource. 

Image from Book Source. 

I blogged about that here. When I first used it back in 2012, it was really new. Now that it's been around awhile, I'm sure it is much more user friendly and easy to use. What I liked about using this site was I had an inventory of ALL my books. All I needed to do was scan the barcode on each book. Students would log into their account and check books out. This was good because I could see what books I had on hand as well as who had a book checked out if I wanted to use it for a lesson. I could also figure out who the missing book on the floor belonged to when nobody in the class would claim it lol. 
Although this system worked well for me, my students did sometime run into issues where they couldn't find a book they were checking out in the system. It was also time consuming for students and the setup was SUPER time consuming for me. It took me forever to get my entire class library uploaded into that database. 

All you need for this NEW and IMPROVED checkout system is a phone/iPad/tablet, books, and kids. 
You good?! I had a rotating schedule on when students could bookshop. 

Each day of the week, a different colored group would get to book shop first thing in the morning. They were allowed to choose 4 books and would keep those books in their book bags until the next time their book shopping day came around (the following week). Once they chose their books, they would simply come up to me, spread their books out and I would snap a photo of them on my phone.

Even if I was in the middle of something, it took less than 5 seconds for me to snap their photo and delete their picture from the previous week. This system allowed me to see who had what book and monitor what was checked out.
 If a kid wanted to keep one of the same books and get a few new ones the following week, they would just choose their new books and come to get their picture taken as normal. If they wanted to keep all their books, they would just come and let me know and I would keep their old photo. Because I only had a few students shopping each day, it was totally manageable. I could also see this working as a class job. 

PRO TIP:

Another thing that helps this system work seamlessly is by having an organized classroom library. This ensures that students can quickly and easily find books that they're interested in. I have all of my library books in bins and they are organized by favorite authors, popular book series, and genre. It makes it easy for my students to find books that they like and they can also quickly put back the books they are retuning (books are labeled so that students know what bins to return them to).

Click here to check out the labels that I use to organize my library AND snag the free labels that go along with this organizational system.
Are you just starting out building your classroom library? You may be interested in this post where I share Ideas on Expanding Your Class Library on a Teacher Budget.
If you decide to try this system out, I'd love to hear about how it's working for you and your students. Feel free to leave me a comment or tag me on Instagram @Teachinginparadise :) 
Short on Time? Save this post for later! 

Bright Idea Hop: Expanding Your Class Library {On a Teacher Budget}

I'm linking up with a TON of AMAZING bloggers today to share with you some of our Brightest Ideas. Our hopes are that these ideas will help to make your life as a teacher a little easier…

Today, I'll be sharing easy and cheap ways that you can expand your classroom library. If you're a beginning teacher starting off with a small library or even a veteran teacher with a pretty good-sized library, I feel that you can never own too many books! 

Using the tips I'm about to share with you today…my class library currently has over 1,000 books (all collected within a 3 year period).

Garage Sales have been the BEST place for me to find gently used, up to date, and CHEAP books. Craigslist makes it easy because I didn't have to drive around and around trying to find garage/rummage sales that had children books. All I needed to do was look under the garage sale category then type in key words I was searching for such as 'Children Books' or 'Chapter Books'. 

I found that by heading to neighborhoods that were in the 'upper class' areas I got books that were in perfect condition, pretty brand new and really cheap! I've purchased books for as cheap as 5 cents a book. The most I've paid at garage sales have been 50 cents a book. 

Also, going to rummage sales that are raising money for children sport teams, or churches have also been good. There are usually a ton of books going for really cheap! 

I scored the entire Magic Tree House Series at a Baseball Rummage Sale….

and Diary of a Wimpy Kid Books (hard cover) for 50 cents each!! 

Hand out Scholastic Book orders and allow students time to look through and circle the book that they would be interested in reading. This is beneficial for three reasons:

1. You get a better idea of the type of books your students are interested in. I like to order books that my students suggest so I know that they will be reading them. It also makes them extra excited about reading! I use my points to purchase these books. 
2. Since the kids are taking the time to look through and circle the books, they are more likely to go home and ask their parents if they can order some of them. I definitely get way more orders when I allow the kids to preview them before taking them home. 
3. The more orders you get, the more points you rack up. I rarely ever spend my own money on books from Scholastic and only use points. 

Encourage your students and parents to order their Scholastic Books online! This is a win-win for everyone because the student is able to get a free book coupon and the class does as well. You'd be surprised at how quickly you can rack up free book coupons! 

Create donation plaques for your class library and encourage students to donate the books that they no longer read! Students love the idea that YOUR future students for years to come will get to enjoy the books they donated. They also like the recognition!

 Students love to bring in their old books that they are done reading to donate to our class library. These cute and fun plaques have definitely bumped up the number of donations I've received. The kids love being able to write their names on the plaques…even more, they love the idea that it will be in my class library for as long as I am teaching and that all their friends, cousins, siblings, etc will know that THEY donated the book :) 

And my last tip for the day is to check your local library. I've found some really new books (that were in the Scholastic Book Orders) at the library for only 25cents! 

Thank you SO MUCH for stopping by to visit my blog today! I had so much fun putting this post together and can't wait to share my next bright idea with you! Make sure you don't miss it by following me via Blog Lovin', Facebook, or Instagram! 

If you're interested in the library labels that I used to organize my classroom library to make books easy for students to book shop, you can find them here!

Next up on this hop is Randi from Teach it With Class. Head on over to her blog where you can learn about Teaching Key Words for Math Problems!  

An InLinkz Link-up

An InLinkz Link-up

An InLinkz Link-up

Vistaprint Addict!!

For those of you who have never heard of Vistaprint...you must check it out! Let me warn you though, you will probably get sucked in and addicted like me. I can spend hours on that darn site creating things to use in my classroom. This is a website where you can pretty much create anything and everything for your classroom...magnets, business cards, banners, t-shirts, hats, pens, and the list goes on! 

I try not to order unless there is a really good sale going in. They usually send e-mails about their latest sales..and they usually happen pretty often too. There are also groupons every once awhile. I feel that you can get extremely good deals on this site....but shipping (for me) is always the killer. Not sure if it's because I live in Hawaii...or if shipping is outrageous no matter where you live?! 

SO for those of you who are looking for some new Vistaprint inspirations or just curious to see how I use VP in my classroom...you are in the right place today, my friend. 

This is probably one of my most frequent orders. I will purchase return address labels for this order and use them to label all of the books in my class library. They have a ton of cute designs too!!

This is one of my most recent creations. I used a business card for this and plan on using it to send home or staple in students planners when we have a parent/teacher conference. I won't need to worry about printing anything or writing a note in students planners. All I'll need to do is grab one of these cards..write the date and time and students name.

I'm really not sure on the pricing of all these products because they always vary depending on what kind of sale and or promotion they are running. I will recommend to not ever buy things at regular price. Wait till there's some kind of sale or promotion going on. I believe you get about 250 business cards...and if I'm not mistaken I may have got a set for free before too. 

This is another way that you could use the business cards. On each child's birthday..they get a birthday lei, a pencil and a homework pass! 

These are address labels (I believe) or small stickers..can't really remember.

My class library has really grown over the past 3 years. I now have nearly 1000 books in my library. I have three tricks that have helped me. 

The first is shopping at garage sales. I was finding books in amazing condition that would range anywhere from 10-50 cents a piece. There were books that cost $1.00 but I was cheap and usually wouldn't get it unless it was a hardcover :P (Now I'm spoiled and think that even the scholastic warehouse sales are expensive!) 

The second way my library has grown has been ordering books through scholastic with points.

And the third way is with these bad boys up above. When students borrow books from my library they notice that some of the books have these stickers instead of my "This book belongs to: Miss Mizufuka" sticker. I'll usually have a few kids ask about it. I then tell them that they are welcome to donate books to our class library that they are no longer going to read (and if it's okay with their parents). Most of them get so excited because they really want to have a 'plaque' in one of the library books that will stay in my library forever. Most kids will bring in a few books...some even bring in boxes and bags full of books!

Here are two more that I have....

 Under this sign I write the kids' "what to do" list. Below is where all of their assignments and page numbers are normally listed. 

I also order small car door magnets that go up on my front whiteboard. These are for things that are written up on the board on a weekly basis and always have a 'spot' 

 You can also get personalized post-its. 

The options are really unlimited with Vistaprint...These are some of my favorites that I have created on the site and use all the time in my own classroom. I hope I sparked some interest and creativity for you...now go and check the site out.... You know you want to!!

Have a great day!