Should students be able to choose their own books

[Elizabeth]

When it comes to my classroom this is a non negotiable. If we are preparing our students to be college and career ready shouldn't we teach them to manage independence. If we are constantly telling what they have to read or that they can only read their AR level we setting them up to view reading as a task or chore rather than an experience? When our students go to the bookstore or library they do not have us there to tell them what to get so we need to teach them the skills to find books that fit them on their own. As a student I HATED reading and I was the student that "watched the movie" read the cliffs notes and became very versed in fooling my teachers. I believe it was due to the fact that I was never given the opportunity to choose my own books or books that I might have connected to. Not until I began giving choice in my own classroom, did I discover my own passion for reading. I sit with my students day after day listening to them talk to each other, with excitement, about what they are reading and having conversations with them about a great book they are reading. It isn't a question/answer time. It is a "dinner talk" conversation. After all isn't that what we want? Don't we want our students to love reading and to connect to what they are reading. Isn't that what truly makes us readers? Book shopping in my class is an organized chaos of chatter about book recommendations, who is trading with who, and pure excitement to begin a new adventure. In addition to their new found love of reading through choice, my students have become better writers. They try what the authors, they read do. They emulate them. I have heard them say, "That's a great hook, I want to try it." They learn new vocabulary and begin using it in their writing and they begin to define their own style. I hope that after they have been in my class I have opened a door for them into a reading world and that it never closes.