To encourage her seventh graders’ reading, Katie Durkin finds herself constantly searching for new ways to keep books in the hands of students. She shares four sustainable practices she uses throughout the school year to plant the seeds of reading with her students.
This fall Katie Durkin’s middle schoolers developed a voluntary reading plan using a design thinking process. After modeling her own reading goals, she had students generate and pursue ‘prototype’ goals that helped them expand choice and voice in their reading practices.
As teachers and students are tossed by the currents of Covid-19, Katie Durkin plans to anchor and then expand her 7th graders’ views of themselves as readers by puzzling out a reading identity, reflecting and planning for the horizon, and charting a path forward.
