Let them read it over and over (and over...)

My husband asks me, "Why do you want to watch that movie again? You've seen it a hundred times!" My response: I like it. I can fast forward to all my favorite parts, I know what's going to happen, so nothing will surprise me. It's comforting to cry over the same parts that I've cried over before. Yes, Mr. Darcy and Elizabeth will get together at the end of Pride and Prejudice, but it's the slow burn of the romance throughout the whole story that is the most satisfying to read/watch again and again.

Thanks A lot Jeff Kinney

As a teacher, there comes a point when I would get frustrated with some of my students who just wanted to read the same book over and over. One of my 3rd graders, let's call him Bryce, read the same book during independent reading, the entire year.

It wasn't from lack of trying that he read the same book,  I tried countless books with him, but he was only interested in reading Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Roddrick Rules. It's taken many years for me to understand the need to reread and understand that telling kids to try other books is actually detrimental to their growth as a reader.

Changing Our Mindset
The difference between a Book Warden and a Teacher Recommending a Book is how we treat the student who is reading and how we react to the choice a student makes, whether it be to re-read a book they've read over and over or a book that we believe is not at their correct reading level. This is so lovingly depicted by Dav Pilkey (author of among others Captain Underpants and Dog Man) in the forward to From Striving to Thriving by Stephanie Harvey and Annie Ward (2017).

Instead of being annoyed with Jeff Kinney and Dav Pilkey for authoring books like Diary of a Wimpy Kid and Dog Man, I should be thanking them over and over. They have created a new generation of readers--kids have books in their hands and they can't WAIT for the next book to come out! If that's not something to celebrate, than I don't know what is. It's all about changing the mindset of the teacher. Yes, we want our students to read and be exposed to a variety of genres and text levels. We want them to be able to decipher non-fiction text features in order to do well on the test, but really in the scheme of things, we want kids to love books and become lifelong readers and by giving them choice, and freedom to read what they want to read, we are doing just that!