Once Upon a Time When I Was a Child.....

My earliest memories of reading take me back to when my stepmother would read stories to me after washing up for bed when I stayed at my dad's house. I loved fairy tales like Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, and Snow White. It was part of the nighttime ritual and established an enjoyment of books and family time.


My sister and I are close in age and we found books to be an escape in a sometimes confusing world. In a divorced household, life is not always as calm as you want it to be. Books helped me to forget where I was and experience a fantastical journey or transport myself to another time period. I loved James and the Giant Peach and Chocolate Fever to name a few. My sister and I began to have quite a collection of books so we created our own library. We organized our books and allowed neighborhood kids to borrow them.  We created a Dewey decimal system complete with index cards glued onto the book jackets and kept track of the borrowers. Yes, this included overdue fees! What entrepreneurs we were then.


My mother was an avid reader and we spent hours at the Newburgh Free Library browsing through books, curling up in chairs, and reading. My mother had a job in a library and my sister and I loved to help during the summer and pretending we were librarians. In school, I loved going to the library to pick out books and also hearing a story aloud. As I grew older and became more aware of becoming a teenager, I grew interested in the Judy Blume books. I was a bit shy in asking questions about my own development and it helped me to know that the main characters had similar feelings as I did. I looked for books that were relevant to my life. I loved reading teen bop magazines to find out the latest news on celebrity crushes. Archie comics were my favorite and I would entertain myself for hours with them.



As a teacher now, I have an classroom library with a mixture of genres. I start the year introducing our school library and having a scavenger hunt for students to become familiar with the layout. Students are required to read 20 minutes per night in an independent book of their choice. I help students select a "just right" book or one that is a bit challenging but not too easy. Each quarter, students participate in book talks which allows others to keep a list of "Some Day Books" or books they may want to read some day. Students actively communicate in a bi-weekly journal with me where they answer discussion questions about the books they are reading. These questions reinforce the common core learning and provide me an opportunity to deepen their connections. As a teacher, I try to model my love of reading by using authentic passages to teach literary elements, character traits, figurative language, or even point of view. I also have literature circles to encourage peer discussion. Each month I send home a scholastic book order to provide more opportunities to select books. This past year, I had students select biographies to read and authentic projects to share at the end. It was great to find out that the students enjoyed reading about famous people from the past and from modern society like Beyonce and Lebron James. My students also have pen pals at an international school in the Netherlands to correspond with. When the package of letters arrives, I cannot hold the students back from reading!. It is magical because they don't even realize that this all adds to their literary experience.

I can't wait to learn more about which books I should add to my classroom library and how I can help my students become fully engaged in literacy.

Trina Naclerio