In our data-driven society, no matter where you go, everyone cares about the same thing: results. If you can’t quantify your gains, then too bad for you.

The same goes for reading instruction. It’s the end of the year, and I’ve been thinking a lot about results. Have my efforts made a difference? Are my students better readers than there were back in September? And if they are, how do we know?

Let’s get one thing out of the way: Tests matter most. Therefore, I’m relieved that students performed well on our online reading assessment, and I’m particularly pleased that Kindlers improved more than non-Kindlers.

But tests are just tests. They don’t paint the whole picture.

That’s why I believe that several measurements are necessary to assess student progress in reading. This year, we’ve tried these data points:

• How many books / pages the students have read,
• Reading stamina
• Reading fluency
• Whether students say they enjoy reading,
• Whether students identify as readers,
• How well students can independently use the reading strategies we’ve taught.

My goal next year is streamline this list down to 2-4 key indicators. That way, all teachers and students can track their progress on common, agreed-on criteria.

Which data points do you think are the most important? Or, do you suggest others? 

 For all of you out there who are worried that the physical book will disappear, please read this recent article from Time Magazine.

According to reporter Matt Peckham, sales of physical books did, in fact, decline in 2012 — but only by 1 percent. Fiction physical books, on the other hand, rose 3 percent.

Children’s books — which don’t render well on the screen — enjoyed the greatest growth in physical form.

But if you’re not convinced, here are a few photos of my students reading real, actual, physical books. Full disclosure: Some of these photos are of former students, and it’s entirely possible that they’ve migrated completely over to e-readers since I taught them. But I don’t think so!

 A study from the United Kingdom reports that young people aged 8 to 16 prefer reading text on screens rather than in print.

Does this mean that the book is dead?

And is the Kindle Classroom Project speeding up this process?

The National Literacy Trust surveyed more than 35,000 young people, and 52 percent said they liked reading on screens. Only 32 percent preferred paper, with the remainder having no opinion or stating they didn’t like to read at all. (I wonder what the results would be had the researchers asked American youth.)

The study didn’t investigate whether young people are reading more or less overall. Some say that the rise of Kindles and tablets has led to the demise of books, while others contend that e-readers offer teenagers a chance to reconnect with books.

That debate will no doubt continue, but for the 49 students who participate in the Kindle Classroom Project, the answer is a pretty easy one. On average, students in the program have read 13 books since January (one semester). Last school year (two semesters), before the project, they read an average of five books.

I don’t hope for the destruction of books. But something has changed in this generation. Screens are everywhere. It’s time that we meet young people where they are and invite them to read how they want to. 

 I read tons of nonfiction (see Iserotope Extras), and as a teacher, I want to encourage my students to read tons of nonfiction.

The new Common Core State Standards agree with my approach.

But up until yesterday, I couldn’t quite find the best and easiest way to incorporate nonfiction into my classroom with my students.

Diigo is a great service, but it hasn’t been updated for a long time, plus it takes a lot of investment to set it up with students. Snip.it was great until Yahoo bought it. And Google Reader is shuttering soon as well. What is an English (or social studies, or science, or any) teacher to do?

Yesterday, Pocket, which lets you save content to read later, announced a major new feature: Send to Friend. Before yesterday, if you wanted to share an article with another person, you could email the article, but your friend would have to read it directly from his or her inbox or forward it, somewhat clumsily, into their Pocket.

No more! Now you can send an article directly from your Pocket to your friend’s Pocket, plus you can add a personal note. No more middle step of going through your friend’s email inbox.

So what does this all have to do with building a community of nonfiction readers in your classroom? Sure, there are other ways for students to share articles, but Pocket works easily and intuitively on phones, which students love. That’s crucial.

Here are a couple ways teachers can try Pocket out:

1. Share a class Pocket account.
You create an account and share the login and password information with students. When students find a particularly interesting article, they Pocket it to the account. In class, you read one of the articles as a whole group, or you give students the option of reading any of the articles in the queue.

I would recommend this as a first step so your students can become familiar with finding good articles, Pocketing them, and building an enthusiasm for reading. Once that happens, you can choose to move to Step 2.

2. Create and build individual student accounts.
When students have their own Pocket accounts, they have more ownership about what they’re reading. They’re more likely to Pocket articles they care about. Pocket even allows you to favorite articles, so students can keep ones they find particularly interesting.

Also, with individual accounts, students can use the Send to Friend feature. They can send an article to a peer or to the class account. Groups of students with similar interests can trade articles. Once recommended articles get shared around, you’ll likely see a nonfiction reading buzz gain traction.

I haven’t yet heard of teachers who are using Pocket with their students to promote nonfiction reading. Are there any of you out there? If so, let me know. Even if you’re not currently using Pocket, it would be great to know if you think Pocket could work in your classroom. 

 The first step of any strong independent reading program is to do a preliminary diagnostic of your students and their reading skills and interests.

Many schools invest in online or paper assessments to determine students’ grade-level equivalent. Many teachers give out reading inventory surveys for their students to complete.

Both of those are good ideas. I do them.

But this year, I’ve found out that it’s pretty easy to figure out the reading lives of students. Here are my three quick-and-easy questions:

1. What are you reading now?
2. What was the last book you read?
3. What book would you like to read next?

Yep, that’s it! In about 30 seconds, I can find out a lot of information.

Question #1 separates the avid readers from the rest. If the student has an answer to the first question, I’m ecstatic. I won’t ever have to worry about him or her. All I have to do is make sure he or she has access to a Kindle or a library. (About 10 percent of students have an answer.)

Question #2 is where it starts getting interesting. If the student answers within a few seconds, and if the answer isn’t something like Clifford the Dog, then the student is a regular reader. Too many teacher-assigned texts have likely sapped this student’s interest in reading, but independent reading will soon turn that around. My move is to make sure this student has one or two good books in a row to read, and then everything will be fine.

On the other hand, if the student has trouble answering, or doesn’t remember, or reveals that he or she has never read a book before, then the student is a reluctant reader. (Some teachers prefer the term “emerging reader.”) I write this student’s name down. After all, no regular English class with whole-class novels and nonfiction articles will change this student’s relationship to reading. Independent reading could work, but only if I do a good job building a relationship with the student, finding out more about his or her interests, assessing reading skill gaps, and vigorously following up on them.

Question #3 is my favorite because it gets at the student’s interests. If the student is a regular or reluctant reader, who hasn’t read in a while, specific titles of books are hard to come by. That’s OK. I ask him or her what kinds of books he or she would like to read.

Usually, though, the student does come up with an answer. And the answers are very revealing.

Just two weeks ago, when the Kindle Classroom Project expanded to its second classroom, I asked the students Question #3. Here is what some of them said:

Alex: My Bloody Life: The Making of a Latin King, by Reymundo Sanchez
Johnny: Life in Prison, by Stanley “Tookie” Williams
Brianna: A Child Called It, by Dave Pelzer
Mariyah: Goosebumps, by R.L. Stine.

So, what would you be able to notice? And what would you ask next? For Alex, Johnny, Brianna, and Mariyah, what would be your next move? 

 I’ve updated the Kindle Classroom Library Wishlist on Amazon to reflect some recent requests that I’ve received from African American boys.

Here they are:

Our America: Life and Death on the South Side of Chicago
by Lealan Jones
$14.44 (paper), not available on Kindle

The Beast
by Walter Dean Myers
$5.46 (paper), not available on Kindle

A Hope in the Unseen: An American Odyssey from the Inner City to the Ivy League
by Ron Suskind
$10.87 (paper), $11.99 (Kindle)

The Pact: Three Young Men Make a Promise and Fulfill a Dream
by Sampson Davis
$10.88 (paper), $12.99 (Kindle)

There Are No Children Here: The Story of Two Boys Growing Up in The Other America
by Alex Kotlowitz
$10.88 (paper), $11.99 (Kindle)

* * *

Pretty good titles, don’t you think? It’s not a surprise to me that most are nonfiction (in general, boys prefer true stories). I’ve read all the books and am impressed by how they’ve remained important over time (especially There Are No Children Here, which was featured in last month’s This American Life).

I’m hoping that you, Faithful Iserotope Readers, will get the word out so some of these books can reach my students’ hands. (Hey, that’s in color!)

You’ll note that I’ve listed both physical and electronic formats if available in case donors want to help me achieve my quest for classroom library mirroring. The Amazon wishlist makes things easy: The ebooks go straight to my email, and the physical books get shipped to my address. (And yes, Kindle books are now becoming more expensive than their physical counterparts. Oh my. I don’t know what to think of that.)

If you don’t want to buy those books but still want to make a donation to reading, you can check out the other books on the wishlist or go to the Contribute page or click the green “Promote reading!” button on the top right.

And if you’d like to share this: See those cute little icons below this post? You can email this post or share it to tons of different places — like Facebook and Google+ and Twitter and LinkedIn and Pinterest (and more).

Thank you, as always, for caring about young people and their reading lives. 

 I’ve found a neat newish website that can help teachers help students find good books to read.

Bookish includes a nifty recommendation feature. You type in a book you’ve loved. The system spits out a book you might like.

Here’s what it looks like:

I think it works pretty well. When I typed in The Fault in Our Stars, I got The Perks of Being a Wallflower. When I typed in Snitch, I got Give a Boy a Gun. When I typed in Perfect Chemistry, I got When You Were Mine.

These are solid recommendations that students will find helpful. After all, some students have trouble finding their next book. And some want to discover their own books, rather than relying on their teacher or their peers. Bookish offers these students another option.

A couple neat features: First, you can enter up to four books into the recommendation engine, which improves the search. Second, each book choice includes a blurb, and some even offer first-chapter samples.

In my view, Bookish is a simple, easy-to-use tool that will help connect students with good books. Try it out! 

 I’ve written before about my goal of classroom library mirroring.

What’s that, you ask?

Classroom library mirroring means that every book that you have in your physical classroom library is also ready for students to read on their Kindles.

So if a title is on the shelf, it’s also on the Kindle — and vice versa.

There are many benefits of mirroring. The three biggest ones are:

1. More than one student can read the same book at the same time,
2. Physical books don’t get lost or damaged because they stay on the shelf,
3. Students get the benefits of browsing (the colorful covers! the blurbs on the back!) for a book without all the painful side effects of checking one out. (Yes, say goodbye to all library checkout systems!)

I can see why some students (and teachers, and parents) might rebel against classroom library mirroring. After all, it’s pretty aggressive (and I’d love to hear your thoughts about it).

“You mean that I can’t read real books?” a student may ask.

Right now, I’m not ready to say what I want to say, which is, “Nope. You can’t read real books. But you can look at them here on the shelf and read them on your Kindle. And if you can’t deal with that, then try your public library!”

But I’d like to become bold enough to follow through with what I know is the right answer.

In order to get there, I need to make sure that true mirroring occurs. It’s not easy. Here is a case study of what I’m talking about:

Can you tell the big difference between the two photos? Yep, one of the physical books has an ebook counterpart, whereas the other doesn’t.

This happens a lot. My physical classroom library contains more than 500 books, while my ebook library has 205 titles. There’s a big gap there. The reverse is true as well. There are some books that are on the Kindles but not on the shelves. A generous donor may buy a title in one format but not in the other.

It’s time for me to make the investment to mirror the two libraries. It’ll be a big project. Three hundred books, after all, will cost around $3,000. This project might take a couple years, but I’m willing to be patient. After all, ebooks aren’t going away anytime soon, even if ereaders change and get fancier.

I also need to make sure to buy both formats of a book when a student makes a request. In other words, if a student wants to read The Future of Us, and I’m pretty sure that the title will be popular, my policy should be to order both the physical and ebook versions. For $20, the title is now available to all students forever. Not too shabby.

One more thing: an organizational challenge. Each ebook needs to be available to all students, but each title, according to Amazon policy, can be shared by only six devices at once. This has never been a problem so far, but it’s possible that more than six students at the same time would want to read the same book.

What do you think about my mirroring idea? Is it a little too much, or does it makes sense? I’d love to hear your thoughts. 

 Common Core is here, which many say is the death knell of independent reading. Teachers are worried that they’ll have to throw away their classroom libraries. Close reading of short texts, they say, will replace full-length novels.

I say that it doesn’t have to be this way — that it’s not an either-or.

If Common Core succeeds, then reading will spread across the curriculum. Science, social studies, and Math teachers will include more informational text in their classes. It might be true that English teachers will introduce more short nonfiction. But if that is done well, there will still be room for students to read what they want.

Especially at the ninth grade, and especially with students who haven’t read a book for years, we must encourage our students to be readers. That’s not going to happen exclusively with short, nonfiction, teacher-assigned texts. No ninth grader is going to become a voracious reader after his teacher assigns him The Gettysburg Address (though it’s a nice speech).

That’s why I think English teachers should not rebel against Common Core (there’s nothing wrong with the new standards) but rather make sure to preserve independent reading as a major component of their curriculum. At some schools, this might take some creativity — like shifting independent reading from English class to Advisory — but it can and needs to be done.

In my experience, interest in reading, or lack thereof, among ninth graders is pretty absolute. If students get to choose what they read, they love it. If they don’t, then they don’t. Simple as that.

So what’s wrong with letting students, as part of their school experience, to read what they want?

Here are a few books that I recently got from a DonorsChoose grant. They’re among the most popular titles, particularly for my Latina/o students. I’m a huge fan of A Place to Stand and My Bloody Life. They’re well written. Boys get in line to read them.

Yes, maybe not every book is of high literary quality (e.g., the Amigas series). But if students are reading 20-40 books a year, there’s nothing wrong with a fun and easy pick sometimes. It builds speed and fluency and stamina, not to mention a joy of reading.

I may be in the minority here. Some may say that independent reading lacks academic rigor, that if I let my students read Perfect Chemistry, they’ll never read The Great Gatsby. I say exactly the opposite: If I don’t let my students read Perfect Chemistry, they’ll never read The Great Gatsby.

What do you think? 

 Here’s a book stand that I found at one of my schools. You’ll notice that the books are really old. (I’m not sure that students will snatch up The Best American Short Stories of 1984.)

But the stand itself is pretty great. And it demonstrates what booksellers and librarians have known for years: People prefer books when their covers are facing outward.

This leads me to two quick ideas:
1. Display “just read” books. When students finish their book, they don’t immediately shelve the book back into the classroom library. This lowers the chance of a book getting popular. Rather, students put their book on the just read stand. Thisshows other students which books have just been completed, which can increase circulation.

2. Display “our favorite” books. After a book is read by, say, five students, it’s eligible for placement in this bookstand. The goal is to build a display of the students’ most-loved books of the year. A few questions: What happens when the stand is fulland there’s another nomination? Does one book have to be voted off the stand? Also, I assume these best-books will be popular. Does there need to be a placeholder to stand in for that book when a student is reading it?

I can’t wait to get this stand into a teacher’s classroom. My hope is to take another photo once students make the stand their own. Let me know what you think and if you have other ideas for displaying books.