Student Choice Leisure Reading Novels

Moderation state
funded
Grant Applicant
Jill Zapata
School Site
Sierra High School
Grant Category
Literacy
Grant Date
2024-06-01T12:00:00
Description

Sierra High School recognizes that this grant request is a repeat request. However, the need for students to choose their own books and the need to replenish our library does not diminish over time. We are a small school with no traditional library access. Students often take on the role of curating books themselves and if anything, as students become more engaged readers, the need for more diverse and challenging texts arise.

The Leisure Reading program is a strong component in the overall development of Sierra High School students’ literacy skills. The role of reading everyday is a major factor in students building overall academic success and the opportunity to build literacy skills, in an non evaluative manner, increases students skills across the curriculum. At Sierra High School, all students read daily for 20 minutes in a novel of their own choice.  The purpose of this grant is to fund the purchase of novels students choose to read during our daily leisure reading. The main objectives that develop from the leisure reading program include students building stamina, increasing their range and use of reading strategies and acquiring an identity as a reader. These objectives directly correlate with the students increasing literacy successes in our content area classrooms.  When students can choose the novels they want to read, have time to read independently with no additional requirements, and share their reading experiences with their peers, their reading successes increase. These successes in turn allow students to have more successes as they interact with content area texts as well. 

Benefits of Program

Sierra High School is a unique blend of diverse learners. The school serves students with special needs, english language learners, students from low socio economic backgrounds, students with difficult social emotional situations and parenting teens. With the expectation that the Leisure Reading program is implemented school wide, all students benefit from their increasing literacy skills as they read a novel of their own choice daily for 20 minutes. In addition to building stronger literacy skills in our school, we see this leisure reading program as having an impact in our communities as well. As students take home novels they have chosen to read, they share them with their families and communities. We believe these interactions tie strongly to the district and Excellence in Education's vision supporting community literacy .  These leisure reading novels are consumable by nature, seeing that they have so many interactions, but the impact they provide to our overall school community is long lasting

Success of Program

Upon enrolling in Sierra High School, students often report they have not successfully completed a novel in five or six years, or in some occasions, ever. A crucial component to this lack of success is often that students don't find books that interest them. The staff works diligently to find novels that interest our student body and sometimes that requires reading off the district's traditional canon of required novels. Once a student finds a book they like, they report finishing it independently within the first month or two of attending Sierra High School. Students who have attended Sierra High School for more than a year or two often report that they finish between 4-5 novels a year independently. As we see our school reading community grow, with students taking a leadership role in talking about what books they like, asking for what books they want to read and sharing their reading experiences, we see our students develop and grow as readers. This in turn supports the learning in our content area classrooms as students' dispositions towards reading increases positively.

In recent years Sierra High School has been implementing a Curriculum Embedded Reading Assessment in the third quarter of English. One of the components the reading assessment measures is students' efficacy in using reading strategies to comprehend complex texts. Three years of data is showing student growth in how they manage and use reading strategies. Sierra High School believes the ability to practice reading with a book of their own choice outside an evaluative situation allows students to become more skilled in reading strategies which directly contributes to their ability to read other complex texts. 

While we are trying to create data that shows student reading comprehension increasing, our leisure reading program does show qualitative evidence that student engagement and success increases with more opportunities to read . Students voice through yearly surveys continues to show that they are tired of reading assigned books or taking AR tests for books they have read. Our leisure reading program, in addition to giving students a low risk environment to read and practice reading strategies, consistently shows that students engagement and reading skills expand. Included below are some statements from students this year about how they feel about reading:

  •  I used to think reading was useless and it would not help me at all in life. This is because the teachers would force me to read books I did not like and then take tests on them to pass and be a better reader. I did not take reading seriously because I never found the books that I liked or had access to. Now I think reading is very important in life because everywhere I go you need to read directions or something to know where you are or know where you are going. I also think it is a very important skill so people can read our history and other nations history. Reading has helped me a lot during school and life by showing me there is more to words and more depth to everything.
  • I used to think reading was boring because I couldn’t find anything that was engaging to my brain. I like to say that I read with my eyes and not my brian. Meaning, I would read an entire page without even paying attention to what was happening in the story. Now that I have found genres that interest me and have learned to read at my own pace, I find reading very enjoyable and something I like to spend a lot of my time doing. Some genres I like to read are murder mystery, romance, stories where it's possible in real life, and dystopian
  •  I used to think reading was boring because the teachers would just make us read the book and would make us remember everything for a class assignment or a test. Which lots of people would stop doing making people dislike reading. I think for a student to like reading and enjoy the book it would mean supporting them and encouraging them to read. Reading could be fun when it comes to discussing the book afterwards without having to complete an assignment or take a test, which is much better. I'd rather read than have to take a test after reading a book. I wonder how much I'll be able to read this school year

 

 

 

 

 

Implementation

Our school wide leisure reading program is built on different tenets, beginning with reading daily for 20 minutes. Students are encouraged to choose books they wish to read and there are no additional assessments or requirements for the task. Student choice is a major part of the success of the program and eventually leads to students viewing themselves as readers. This grant supports the purchasing of novels for student choice leisure reading throughout the year.

Can you share this grant with your grade level or subject team?

This grant supports all students in all grade and subject levels of Sierra High School as the expectation is that all students read across the school every morning. Students read in their biology and math classes in addition to their English classes. 

Sustainability
As a small, alternative high school, Sierra High does not have access to a traditional school library. Our school community must work hard to provide availability and access to novels for our students. Because we support student voice as they choose the novels they wish to read, we sometimes have to veer from more readily available district texts. While there are funds and school resources available for some novels, some of the novels have to be purchased from outside sources. As we build a library for our school and build a community of readers for our students, our books are consumed. Students write in them, students share them after they have finished reading them, different students read them multiple times. There is an ongoing need to replace and supplement the books in our library. The additional funding of this grant allows us to continue building our library while recognizing the consumable nature of these novels and the need for some of these books to be supplemented yearly.
Amount Funded
$1846.00
Individual Budget Items(s)
$1650 - Individual Student Choice Leisure Reading Novels
Shipping
$46.00
Taxes
$150.00
Other funding sources

While there are some small funding streams available through department funds and Title 1 resources, we are a small school and those funds are limited. Additionally, to support student choice, we sometimes have to buy book titles outside the recommended reading lists to further students' reading interests.

File Uploads
IMG_4244.jpg (1.65 MB)
Notes

We utilize  local bookstores in Truckee and Reno, on- line distributors such as Amazon Books and Books A Million and low cost publishers such as Dover Thrift Editions as vendors to help keep our cost low.