The reading excitement is so intense that I’m receiving multiple new book requests every day. Sometimes, these multiple requests come from the same students!
Are students hoarding books? Or are they reading them?
My guess is the latter.
Growing up, I remember times when I tore through books. It would be a reading rampage. Maybe I would hit a lull for a while and focus on baseball, but then, boom, an unstoppable reading marathon hit.
Did you experience something similar?
With the Kindle Classroom Project, students gain access to books 24 hours a day. There are now 563 books in the library, waiting to be read, plus the promise that students may request new books they want to read.
With 600 Kindles out, the requests come in every day.
Luz, a power reader in Hayward, who read 40 books last year, requested two books tonight. Katie, a student in Oakland who just received her Kindle last week, asked for a book yesterday and then another one today. Juan did the same thing.
The requests are so rampant that I’ve had to tell students, “You may request one book at a time.” My intent is not to limit their enthusiasm. It’s just that I want to make sure students are respecting the process. I don’t want their Kindles to get filled with unread books, just like the to-be-read pile next to my bed.
Except I don’t think this is what’s happening. The students who are requesting multiple books per week are reading those books, and there’s a high chance that we’ll have many students who read more than 50 books this year.
The KCP is really growing, and it’s exciting to see, and I’m happy that students are reading, and that they’re comfortable asking for the books they want to read.
My multiple-requester students confirm that they are just plowing through books. No hoarding there!
(And maybe no sleeping either, but for a good book, that’s a fair trade.)
Definitely a fair trade, Lara! (Who needs sleep, anyway, when there are 560+ good books to read?)