Margin Notes

Try this tomorrow: Reading with Personal Goals 

Do you ever wonder how your own reading and writing life can transfer into your classroom? In Leading Literate Lives, Stephanie Affinito details reading and writing practices that will enhance your own literate life, and then explains how these practices can be transferred to the classroom.  

She emphasizes that the literate lives within a classroom should replicate the literate lives outside of the classroom. An important quote from her introduction is that “if consistently tasked with reading and writing that feels like work – for example, by reading books of someone else’s choosing and responding in artificial ways and by writing with little personal investment, with strict requirements and formats and for no audience other than the teacher – students may equate reading and writing with something to be completed rather than lived.” 

With that authenticity in mind, one way to inspire reading is through personal goals. These should be goals that you want to accomplish and are meaningful to you, the reader. Like the example in the image of the chart, you will want to pick a personal reading goal and brainstorm actionable ways to achieve the goal. 

When considering bringing this to the classroom, Stephanie asks some important reflection questions about reading goals: did you create them for your students? Or with your students? Of course, your reading assessment is going to be aligned with your curriculum and standards, but the goals can be personal expressions of what your students want/need to work on.  

Using the chart above as a model, create some mini-lessons on how to make personalized goals with actionable actions and give your students ownership over their reading life. 

Affinito, Stephanie. Leading Literate Lives: Habits and Mindsets for Reimagining Classroom Practice. Heinemann, 2021.