New Year's Reading Resolutions

Many people make New Year's resolutions, and I am making my reading resolutions as I am heading back to the classroom tomorrow.  I've been out of school for six weeks since I had my daughter in December.  I will be meeting my new second semester students and starting a fresh instructional period at school.

I have a huge classroom library and really love to help students find great books.  I started understanding the importance of keeping up with the new young adult literature about four years ago, and keeping up with books has been my favorite hobby since that time.  I just truly love reading and being taken away by a great book.  Some of my proudest, most fond teaching memories are of students finally finding a good book and learning to love reading more because of the great choices they found in my classroom.

With that said, I always want to be a good model reader for my students, so of course, I want to share my 2011 reading goals.  I think that good readers and passionate readers always sort of know what they want to read next.  They look ahead and eagerly anticipate the next great read.  In "real life" people might not write about their reading choices and habits as much as an English or language arts teacher, but those readers probably do this thinking in their heads instead.

Here are my goals for 2011:

1. Read 40 books - This number is less than what I read last year, but it's appropriate for my life right now.  Up until this year it's just been my husband and me here at my house, but now we have a little girl to take care of.  It's very realistic to say that I probably won't read as many books as I usually do.  I think 40 is an ambitious number and right on--not too many and not too few.  
2. Read some/something each day for my own enjoyment - I will be reading class texts (Beowulf, Romeo and Juliet, etc.) all the time anyway, so I am not counting those.  Even if it's just a page, a poem, or a chapter, I want to make sure that each day no matter how busy, I take a moment for myself to read something for fun.
3. Read more picture books - Since my little girl is going to be growing up fast, I want to also start keeping up with great picture books!  I have lots of fun board books already, and I can't wait to begin reading nightly to my little girl.  She's too young to really "get it" right now, but my husband and I still read to her anyway and let her see the pictures in her board books.  
4. Continue blogging - I want to keep up with my blog this year.  I've done really well with this but do want to keep it a priority.

I have other goals for classroom reading, but these are my main ones for now that apply to my reading overall.  I hope my students will be excited to set their own goals this year.

Here are some of the new books I've purchased and can't wait to read.  Some are new and some are from years past. I really have, like, 200 or more books on my mental "to read" list, but these are on my shelf.  I can't wait to get to them!  I also just can't wait to see what amazing stories 2011 brings us!!

Click each book cover to read more about the book from Indie Bound.   Happy reading!!



and the rest of this series