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.
It’s hard to measure student efficacy as their reading comprehension increases, but our leisure reading program helps build on these ideas. Students voice through yearly surveys 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, shows through our anecdotal evidence that students engagement and reading skills expand. Included below are some statements from students about how their opinion of reading has been changing.
I used to think reading was so boring and wouldn't like to read because I wouldn't understand what I was reading. Now I think reading is so fun and interesting everything we have read has really interested me because I would use reading strategies to understand.
I used to think reading was very confusing because I would always just read what I was told to read and I never paid attention to it so I never understood it and just kind of skipped all the important parts. Now I think reading is unexpected and unique because you’re always learning new things every time you read, and their(sic) always the unexpected things that you never really predict will happen.
I used to think of reading as something I enjoyed as a kid because I read a lot as a kid and stopped once I got to high school. I didn't think it was something I would enjoy again. Now I think reading is fun again because I find myself reading for pleasure and not for school. I enjoy the stories and the grounding effect it creates.
I used to think reading was okay, not horrible and not great because I was never interested in what the teachers picked out for the class to read. Now I think reading is okay because I've learned to read, annotate, highlight, memorize and chunk my text, before I did not know how to do any of those things and just forced myself to read.
I used to think reading was boring and useless because I never found the right book to read and couldn't even focus on it because I was never interested in my head I never thought reading was important. Now I think reading is calming and like watching a movie in your head. Visualizing is something I do every time I read. I make up how places and characters look like. It makes school so much easier because you understand reading assignments better and faster.
