Reading is a lifelong process that students need to continue to foster or build upon. NCE research notes that U.S. public school students who reported reading for fun almost every day scored higher on average on the 2011 National Assessment of Educational Progress than did students who did not. Your student may be a vivacious reader or a new reader, either way, this year your student will be participating in an independent reading program. I am going to give your student the tools to be a successful reader by exposing your student to books of their interest, ability, and temperament. 

Research shows that students are motivated to read when:

• Students are given the opportunity to select from a wide variety of genres and books.

• Students are given ample opportunities to engage in silent sustained reading

• Students are able to socialize and discuss what they are reading

• Students are successful with reading challenging text. 

Students need to be able to choose what they read during daily independent reading time (of course with help and guidance from teachers, librarians, and parents). Our class will travel to the library periodically to checkout and learn about new books.

I use the following guidelines to select titles in my classroom library:

• The novel is easy enough for a reluctant reader, or contains a plot and vocabulary at an appropriate level of complexity to satisfy the advance reader, or hits somewhere in between;

• The novel is current and not outdated;

• The novel entertains the reader and also provokes thinking;

• The novel correlates with text and themes taught in whole-class instruction;

• The novel coordinates with other subjects/disciplines;

• The novel reflects issues that adolescents face today in society;

• The novel is age-appropriate, keeping in mind the broad range of reading and maturity levels in my classroom.

I use various methods to locate titles, which include:

• National Awards lists which include the National Book Award, the Walden Award, and etc.

• Lists from local, state, and national workshops

• Websites that promote young adult literature such as ALAN, Goodreads, and New York’s Best Sellers List. 

• Suggestions/recommendations from Professors at local universities.

• Our class will have book talks weekly where students will be able to share what they are reading with their peers. I make book talk recommendations to your student based on his/her personal interests and reading ability.

Please understand that I do not censor what your student chooses to read. I will encourage your student to learn and communicate what his/her boundaries are with topics/themes and authors (I think this is a skill all readers must learn!), and I encourage you to talk about this with your teenager, as well. I trust your student to make good book choices, and I respect his/her right to read, but I also respect your wishes as a parent. Please email me if there are topics you do not wish your teenagers to read about during our independent reading time. Ultimately, however, the parent-child relationship is the best place to have discussions about censorship. Please also note that it is impossible for the teachers or librarian at Alcoa High School to know exactly what content is in all 18,000+ books in the library. If you have a question or concern regarding your teenager’s book choice, please send me an email and we will have your teenager choose another book. A list of all available books in the library can be obtained on our school website. For a list of books available to students on my classroom shelves, please see the list on this website.