It's hard to do free voluntary reading in a classroom because it can't really be voluntary. You're telling them to read. And it can only be free within boundaries, because they can only read things at their level, and that can be pretty limiting. But I've spent some time building up a pretty decent library, because - as studies have found - when kids read what they want to, they get more out of it than reading what they're told to read. So how do we get our kids to read - since it builds vocab, it builds spelling, it builds idiom and expression - on their own?
We spend ten minutes reading at the beginning (or end, for some classes) of class on Mondays and Wednesdays, and I read them a story most Fridays. I give them a log they fill out that notes what they read (the name of the story, pages of a book, whatever) and a brief summary of it. It keeps them from reading things they don't understand. Some of them read the same four pages every day for a week, and I'm actually fine with that. They think they're getting away with no work, but really what it means is that they're getting repetition, which doesn't do them any harm.
I have a class set of textbooks that eat up my school-issue bookshelves, plus some novels (because the kids have begun to know that when they need something to read in their other classes, I have fiction and will allow them in without interrogation, unlike the library, and so - ha!- I am sneakily getting them to read books about Rome), so there's no space for my FVR library. So instead, I have acquired a cheap wooden bookshelf.
I have painted it four colors: blue, red, yellow and green. If you don't like painting, Washi tape is awesome, very cheap and gettable at Office Max or via the internet.
On the blue shelf are all the books I feel like are readable for students at the very, very novice level.
On the red shelf are books of a slightly more intermediate level. Enterprising Latin I students near the end of the year might be able to read them. The IIs should be able to.
On the yellow shelf are more heavily intermediate books. Several of my IIs, but not all of them, can read them easily. Many of my threes can.
On the green shelf are the more advanced books. They range from things that the IIIs and IVs can read to things that only the very advanced students - those six or seven, you know them - can read. I have purchased a number of books, ranging from Olivia in Latin to the Usborne Latin for Beginners to Fabulae Faciles to some harder texts, like Hygini Fabulae. But that's not really enough. Latin teachers know this - there's just not that much out there that the majority of high school Latin students can read. So here's how I found the stuff I didn't buy:
TarHeel Reader is a crowd-sourced goldmine of short, illustrated, comprehensible readers, and I followed the rabbit hole down. I read probably three hundred books, tossing out either the ones that were poorly written or the ones that simply weren't going to be compelling, and the rest I downloaded (there's a gray wheel in the upper right hand corner that gives you the option to download it to PowerPoint, whence you can print). I printed them all, hole-punched them and sorted them into folders. This is an example of one that I found. I have fables by Laura Gibbs (more advanced), stories about mythology, and many, many of Keith Toda's wonderful illustrated stories.
I printed also Anthony Gibbins' Gilbo series, which is brilliantly done and entertainingly written and his Hobbitus Per Se Illustrata. I've got copies of stories my students and I have told together that we typed up, and so they like to read those. They also like to read the stories from other classes. The plot line is still familiar, but the details differ, so they make good reading material.
TarHeel Reader offers stories in 22 languages, including Galician and Basque (and Latin!).
I also keep a couple of the textbooks on the shelves, because some of the stories really are good, and the kids feel safe with them. I do have to keep an eye on them, though, because it's easy to flip to the culture sections and read the English.
As people continue to write these things, and as my students and I continue to tell stories, I'll be able to add more to my collection.
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