First, let me say that our school library is wonderful. Thanks to the efforts of our talented librarians, our school library is filled with many high-interest, engaging titles. I take my classes to the library regularly to give students the opportunity to hear book talks and to browse through the library’s collections.

Still, I felt like I was hitting a wall when it came to independent reading. It’s one thing to take time to visit the library to seek books and another thing to simply be surrounded by books every time you walked into your English class. And that’s what I wanted my classroom to be—a place where students were surrounded, literally, by books. Consistently. Every day. I wanted a place where reading was “top of mind” in a way that it wasn’t before.

And by the end of the school year, my classroom finally became that place. How?

Continue reading at WRITE . SHARE . CONNECT, the PA Writing and Literature Project Blog.