Reading in the Wild

First of all I would like to say that I love the idea that Donalyn Miller presents creating students who are wild readers (lifelong readers). During this past summer I had the privilege of working at Woodrow Wilson elementary school for the migrant education Program. During the time that I worked there as an instructional paraprofessional I saw how the teacher that I assisted encouraged her students to read all the time. They had an hour each day to read anything that they wanted. The teacher called it D.E.A.R time (Drop Everything And Read). At first the kids weren’t very happy about it because most of them didn’t feel confident in their reading abilities but after a few weeks they didn’t even want to have recess, they wanted to stay in and read. Donalyn states in the book that “the more students practice, the more they enjoy and develop confidence in reading and the more likely they are to read in their free time” (p.9) I completely agree with that because I saw how kids loved to read by the end of the summer program. All they need is a little encouragement to keep practicing their reading.

I am most excited about seeing my students read all the time. Nothing in the world could be more rewarding that seeing a young person learning and reading. It helps them to be creative and open minded to new adventures and opportunities. It stimulates imagination. Most of us don’t read because we want too, that’s why I feel that sometimes our imagination and creativeness is not to its full potential. Personally, I am going to start reading a lot of children’s books so that when I have my own classroom I will know what kids like and how to make reading fun to them.