Reading and More Reading

I've been over at Goodreads, plugging in books and writing reviews when I can. This is a great site that lets you catalog the books you own and the books you've read. I've managed, somehow (I don't remember how I did this), to import a list of all the books I've bought from Amazon, and that netted me about 150 books, though I did go back and delete all the ones I bought for other people. Currently I've added all the books that are on top of my bookcases, but haven't actually gotten to the books IN the bookcases yet.

That is 244 books. So far.

And that doesn't count books I've gotten from the library, or read and gave away, or took to the trade-'em-in store!

If you're on Goodreads already, you can see my profile here.

The vast majority of my documented books are mysteries. I probably won't actually write reviews for them, if I've already read them, because they tend to blur together after awhile and I don't remember them individually. I most likely enjoyed them, though, so you can consider that a recommendation.

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I've been tasked by the administration to find some sort of assessment that will test the reading levels of all the freshmen in the building, This is, I believe, to see who needs to be put in a reading class again next year. And guess who will probably be teaching said reading class.

To that end, I'm putting together a proposal that I will present to my principal next week. I'm pretty excited about it, as it means I will get to use some of the new strategies I've learned in my graduate classes, and I think the kids will even enjoy it. I KNOW!

I set down most of the plans yesterday and spent most of the night thinking through the actual practice of teaching it, which is going to be fairly challenging, in addition to being wholly new to both me and to the students. That may or may not be a good thing ... though I am thinking optimistically, especially as my plan has the students spending most of their time with books in their hands, and less time with me telling them how to find the main idea (yuck, main idea! I never get that right, because I constantly second-guess myself: "Well, this sentence could be the main idea, but maybe the author's purpose is really ... FINE IT'S C.")

The plan's rate of success depends upon whether the school intends for students to take an extra reading class in order to get a higher score on the ACT or in order to become good readers, a skill that will last them long after their ACT scores have drifted off to obscurity. I hope it's the second.

Anyway, fingers crossed, and I hope you get some time to read for yourself!