Mind the Middle: Helping Middle Grade Readers Learn to Choose Books, a guest post by Lauren Parnes

When children first learn to make meaning from lines of letters, it is like MAGIC! How can we help young adolescents to rediscover that magic when they have lost it? As secondary school librarians, we all have the experience of watching students who simply do not know how to find a book to read. They wander the library, staring at rows of books and leave with the same book they have been choosing for years or grab a random book and head back to class. We try to help with our readers’ advisory magic, but if we want to pull in our less-than-enthusiastic readers, independent reading needs more support before the book is taken to class. I have worked with middle school students for many years, and I believe that middle school is a good time to recapture these readers for whom the magic has become dormant. If we want students to rediscover the magic and recover the superpower of reading, school librarians must help students to learn the skill of book choosing and reawaken the joy of finding a book they love to read.

I am fortunate to work at a middle school where independent reading time (SSR) is set aside for each day of school after lunch. All teachers participate and all teachers require students to have an independent reading book with them. When it comes  time to read, teachers often face the struggle of students resisting reading through a variety of behaviors, from putting their head down, staring into space, complaining and distracting other students. What can we do to help teachers and students? I believe that the essential skill of choosing a book that you like to read needs to be taught directly, it does not just happen organically for many of our students, especially those who do not have bookstore or library experiences outside of school.  I am on a mission to  find out how to do that. I want to share what I do with classes and then reinforce with individual students to help them learn book choosing skills. So I try out a lot of approaches with classes that come to the library and I’d like to start more discussions about how to teach and support book choosing skills for our book resistant kids.

Keeping in mind that the students who seem to have lost their love of books likely loved books and reading at some point , often when they were younger. They may self-identify as non-readers, perhaps from having too many negative experiences with texts. They may have years of experience carting around a book at the bottom of their backpack in case someone “makes” them read.They may have grown accustomed to books they don’t like. For these readers, independent reading can become another unfulfilling chore. Finding a book in a library with thousands of books is daunting and perhaps a boring, unfulfilling chore.

I have slowly built up a routine of all English classes,including Special Education and English Language Learner English classes, coming to the library at the start of the school year, with some classes visiting every few weeks or at least at the start of the new semester. I emphasize the idea that I want students to be independent consumers of information and that they are old enough to use the freedom of choosing their own book and acting independently. I also explain how our library uses the same shelving systems as their high school library and the college libraries and the public library and why the systems might be different than that of their elementary schools. 

What do I teach ? I teach the behaviors of students who are adept at book choosing. Here are some examples:

1. Searching skills-THE MOST POWERFUL THING I DO-I teach all classes how to use the online catalog. This gives students access to a powerful tool and I emphasize that they are working towards more independent learning. We practice choosing subjects to search for, understanding the Call number and how to find it, browsing online collections that I have made to help them. Many English classes are required by teachers to browse the catalog and come to the library with a couple choices and call numbers in hand.
2. Browsing skills-all students are taught that Fiction is organized by author’s last names and they practice going to the stacks and finding the spot where their “future novel” will be shelved. We walk the stacks together and get the lay of the land alphabetically.
3. Critics skills: Genuinely modeling both enthusiasm for and indifference to specific books demonstrates the practices of folks who know how to find what they like to read. Our preferences are personal and that’s a good thing! Encouraging students to exchange a book if it doesn’t work for them empowers them. It acknowledges their ability to choose, respects their tastes and sets the expectation that they will be successful choosing a book they like.  Teachers give credit to students , either extra credit or as part of an assignment, when they write book reviews for shelf-talkers or reviews in the catalog

These are all happening when classes visit the library, but they all can be modeled and used for small groups of students or with individuals. I would really like to start a discussion group that focuses on developing book choosing skills. Please contact me at lparnes@petk12.org if you are interested in continuing this conversation.

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Lauren Parnes is a Teacher Librarian with over twenty-five years in secondary classrooms, fifteen of them in middle school libraries. In her teaching and as the founder of Readerly Sibs, a literacy organization, she works directly with students in the process of creating and shaping their reader identities.

She has an M.A. in Education with a focus in Literacy and Reading in addition to her English and Teacher Librarian crede

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