The Scholastic Book Fair is this week. It's always an exciting event for me! All the classes were scheduled for a 30 minutes preview today. When I signed up for my time slot with my 8th graders, I thought, we probably won't use the whole 30 minutes. It'll probably take 10 or 15 at the most before they loose interest and start fooling around.
Boy was I surprised and delighted when they spent the entire 30 minutes looking at books! No one fooled around for even a moment. Several made lists of books they want to buy, and they would have kept looking at books had our time not been up. They weren't just pulling books off the shelves and then putting them back with barely a glance, they were pulling books, opening them, showing their friends, and standing there reading them. Two groups of boys stood in huddles with copies of the same book, looking through them. The girls were reading the backs of books to each other. A couple of boys found a book they really liked and said, "Mrs. Stotz! You have to get this one for the classroom!" So of course that went right into my stack!
My 7th graders previewed the sale with their homeroom teacher right before the 8th graders. When I walked into the gym with my homeroom, they were still there. "Mrs. Stotz! Look at my list!" They all wanted to show me what they where hoping for. When I told them, "Oh yeah, I have that one on my wish list, too." They replied, "We know, we looked through your stack to see what you were getting!"
Congratulations! You are certainly doing something right. :) If you show that you value reading or writing, your students will too!
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