Student Created Reading Trackers

Reading logs get a bad rap. And they have a bad rap for a reason -- the why. The why behind tracking minutes, pages, and parent signatures is often accountability. But are kids really buying in and actually doing the work? I'd argue many kids are reading but the log isn't telling them much about their reading habits or their reading lives. They are simply "checking off " the boxes. And the others are just filling it out randomly or having a parent sign off. I'd given up logs quite a while a while ago but I still needed wanted something for kids to use to help them navigate and look closer at their reading lives. 

Last year, I had the idea for my students to create their own "reading trackers" to help them keep track of what matters to them -- genres, books, formats, etc. With everything happening last year, the trackers started off strong but weren't always kept up with. However, this year, I started with them again and they've already started evolving. Some students quickly realized that they needed to take their trackers digital so that they had easier access and the ability to create graphs in Google. Other students realized that tracking the number of books wasn't giving them enough or the information they wanted, so they began changing or editing their tracker's purpose. I've been blown away by the ownership and self-reflection. Students used their trackers to begin to set short term goals and monitor their own progress. I'm hoping the exciement continues as we work towards our first quarter goals in Reader's Workshop. 

Here's a few of the amazing trackers kids created: 

Just a note: These are all from our launch day so none of these are "finished."

I'm excited to update this post as kids work on improving their trackers and continue to use them through the end of the quarter (or longer) as we continue to set goals and work on monitoring our progress. 

How to do you inspire students to track their reading?