Reading!

I like reading. I used to like it more. Or maybe it's just that I used to have more time for it. This school year, it has been a ginormous struggle for me to actually sit down with a book and read. I'm a busy lady, what can I say? 
But then, I thought, "How can I encourage and expect my grade 2s to read when I barely make time for it myself?" And then I felt majorly ashamed. 
Enter: reading program the second. We call it "Rad Readers" - alike in name, yes, to our "Awesome Readers", because hey, there can't be a shortage of adjectives meaning wonderful, amazing, captivating or super-duper important before that word "reading". So now, I have one of these fancy new things hanging out in our classroom with my name on it!

It works like this: I read a chapter, I get a bead. And, uh, of course, you know, the kids read a book, the kids get a bead.  (I literally JUST introduced this to my students this morning, hence the lack of beads.) So far, I have two. Go me! I'm reading Lonesome Dove, and am actually loving it. It's so far removed from my real life (it's very cattle country in the southern US) and I just love the characters.

Speaking of cowboy books, I've also read and really liked it, too! If you think you might have a penchant for gritty vengeance, cowboy hoopla, or old country hardships, give it a shot. (Even if you don't, maybe you do but just don't realize - which is how it seems to have gone down for me. I guess it's the farm girl still trapped inside me, even after ....oh, 15 years off of the farm!) 

Here's hoping my kids love this little bit of encouragement as much as I do so far! On a similar note, our Awesome Reader program is going swimmingly! I'm so loving how excited the readers get each day. I made a schedule and sent it home to parents with the fluency rubric to, you know, keep all parties involved. Good times!
Happy reading, all!
- Amanda