Wednesday, October 24, 2018

Building a Literate Community


Our building is in year two of coming together to determine our reading beliefs. We began this process by using the guidance of Regie Routman in her book Read, Write, Lead.  




In her book she states that, "Coming together as a whole school around shared literacy beliefs and learning is a highly overlooked and undervalued endeavor." We had all staff fill out her beliefs sheet and gathered the results. After that, we brought the top 6 ideas back to staff and had them give us feedback again. We came up with one belief that we all could get behind. Regie says that, "At first it is not unusual for a staff to come to agreement on only one or two beliefs about reading and writing." We were so glad she said this, because we might have been quite discouraged. You can see our belief in the above poster. 

(Matt Renwick has also done this work with his building, and you can read about some it here).

This year, we are trying to encourage the love of reading both in our staff and in our students. We have picture books placed in strategic places for teachers to see: in the workroom, by the copier, by the paper cutter. 

The reading department also started giving book talks around picture books at staff meetings.

Two teachers in our building have started #classroombookaday, inspired by Donalyn Miller and Jillian Heise. They both said  how much love they see in their kids around reading and how this has built such a solid community in their classrooms.

I have also decided to make my reading life more visible to staff and students. I posted pictures of the covers of the books I have read on my door (fire hazard). I want my students to see that I am a reader too!

Our next step is to start discussing what instructional practices match our beliefs. Regie states that, "Instructional priorities begin to shift as staff members gradually come together around shared beliefs." I look forward to this work.

What have you done to develop your beliefs around literacy?