Tuesday, October 26, 2010

2010 Book #31: The Book Whisperer



I have finished reading an interesting book called The Book Whisperer by Donalyn Miller. I chose to read this book for my yearly book to count towards my continuing education credits. Sometimes I am disappointed with the book I chose to use; this year I really enjoyed reading the book and agree with the author's opinions about reading.

Donalyn Miller is a teacher who loves reading and shares her love of reading with each of her students. In this book she shares her techniques and advice for how to teach reading. Students are not given much time to just read in today's classrooms. Teachers say they don't have time for that. Instead they are forced to read a book assigned to the class by a teacher, prepare for a standardized test, and do worksheet after worksheet. This is not effective. Mrs. Miller has a totally different approach. The kids in her class actually read. They take ownership of their reading through selecting their own books and sharing favorite books/authors with classmates as well as their teacher. She writes that the average each student reads is 40-50 books per year. It was interesting to read about the different types of readers she has in her class each year and how she gets all of them to read.

I am glad I read this book and wish there were more teachers out there who valued reading as Mrs. Miller does.


Have a day of blessings!

1 comment:

Denise said...

Such a nice review.