A Class Full of Readers

It's true! I can still hardly believe it. As I watched my class of twenty-five ESL students sit and read silently for over thirty minutes, I couldn't keep the smile off my face. Since the very first day of school in September I have stressed the importance of reading and my students have had the responsibility to select independent reading books and read them during our twenty minute home room period and after school for homework. Most mornings I would see at least three or four people staring off into space, maybe two or three who blatantly refused to pick up a book ("I don't want to read," "I don't like reading," "I have a headache," etc.), and always several students trying to chat with one another. Often my pleas about reading being the MOST important thing we do in school fell on deaf ears, but I was relentless. This week, because of the new contract and the 37.5 additional minutes, home room was cut to ten minutes so I decided that I would incorporate silent reading time into the regular ESL period.
My students have been involved in a reading program called Accelerated Reader since November now. It is an online program that allows students to take multiple choice reading quizzes once they have read a book. The idea is that they will accumulate points by answering questions correctly over books they have read, enabling them to track their own reading progress and textual comprehension. A few of my students embraced the program whole-heartedly and were excited about getting points. I had originally told them all that those students who earned 15, 25, and 50 points would receive some fantastic prize (still undetermined in my mind). Well, as I said, this all started in November and last week my most intelligent, motivated student finally got to 15 so I announced that at the end of every month, beginning in February, I would organize an Accelerated Reader trip. All the students who are ready for a prize will be invited to go to some great place in New York with me on a Friday afternoon or Saturday. All of the sudden, everyone was excited.
Since then, class 621 has embraced reading. One of the students told me the other, "Everyone says you will do anything to get us to read." I just smiled. This Friday was the first day we read for an extended time in ESL class and it was great. I had four to five students in the back of the room taking quizzes while every other child was intently reading. Even Juan, an extremely reluctant reader and often defiant, is now excited about the points he is getting and the stories he is reading. After reading, we continued our study on biography and I read aloud the picture book When Marian Sang. Once again, we had a great discussion on racism and the civil rights movement, and, at the end of the book, several students asked if we could go the opera sometime (Marian Anderson was the first African American to sing in the Metropolitan Opera). What a fantastic class!