Many of us can remember class time specifically set aside for silent reading, sometimes called SSR (Sustained Silent Reading) or DEAR (Drop Everything And Read). Although the idea of encouraging children to read independently each day is valid, most often the time is not spent reading, it is more often spent off task. It has been found the effective teachers employ intentional independent reading, where an hour of time is allotted for the task.
It looks a little something like this:
- 5-10 minutes preparing children to read
- 40-45 minutes spent wit children reading and teacher conferencing with individual students.
- 5-10 minutes spent engaging students in follow up activities related to reading
Tips for preparing students for independent reading:
- Give students a reading inventory to fill out a few times per year.
- Organize the classroom library with a large variety of books that are of the students interests and on various reading levels.
- Teach children how to select the "perfect book"
- Include centers with audiobooks, which can be beneficial in many ways.
How to select a just right book & sustain reading:
Tips to teach students about picking the perfect book to read and what to avoid doing in order to not be a distraction.
What is a just right book?
- Something you're interested in
- The right length/ number of pages
- Favorite authors
- Right level
- Can read most of the words
- Reminds you of something in your past
- Pictures/ illustrations are good
- funny
What distracts us from reading?
- someone tries to show you something or ask a question
- someone asks you for help with a word
- someone is reading too loud or is making noises
- people walking around
- picking books that are not just right
Independent Writing:
Independent writing is a mainstay in literacy instruction for many reasons. It contributes to the development of reading comprehension because when a student understands a particular aspect of writing, they are better able to understand reading in the same style, they coincide. It also can help with a childs' self image as they learn that someone values reading their thoughts and experiences. It also helps to prepare children for success in the outside world in the future. Children need to be competent in writing, using word processors, emailing, editing, etc. in order to be successful in today's world.
The Writing Process:
1. Explore
- notice events, people, objects in the world around you
- Record thoughts and observations through writing and sketching
- discover interests, focus, and purpose
- Create discovery draft
2. Draft
- Tentatively plan writing
- write discovery draft and successive drafts to final draft
- revise, select from, or expand discovery draft
- focus on voice
- develop ideas and attend to text organization
- attend to sentence variety and word choice
- work on beginnings, details, language flow, and endings
3. Edit
- Proofread and edit for conventions- grammar, spelling, capitals, punctuation
- complete final copy
4. Publish
- conduct final, formal editing
- produce published piece with final layout illustration and graphics.
Literature Discussion:
Literature discussion is not simply asking questions about the book such as "what was the plot?". That is not engaging and does not deepen the understanding of the literature at hand. Instead discussing literature is about looking at the positives and negatives of a book, how it made you feel, what you were thinking at different points in the book, and how at the end your opinions had changed.
Effective teachers have classrooms of students who engage in this type of conversation with the teacher and their peers. This is a perfect way for teachers to not only increase childrens' reading comprehension, but to also instill in them how to carry a deep, meaningful conversation, which is the basis for critical thinking.
Guidelines for Literature Discussion Groups:
- Have places flagged for sharing
- Have good log entries to share
- Look at the person who is speaking
- Listen carefully
- Take turns talking
- Participate in the discussion
- Stay on task
- Stick to the topic
- Enjoy the discussion
Overall I think that all of this information is very beneficial for future teachers. I certainly appreciated the information about how to conduct independent reading in the classroom the most effective way. I always thought how difficult of a transition it was to go from class to discussion to 20 minutes of supposed reading, I was not usually able to get into the book for about 10 minutes and that left only 10 minutes of actual reading. Discussing literature is not something I was exposed to much in my elementary education, but I believe that it is important to teach students how to do this at a young age, so that they can continue to grow in this area and also expand their understanding of literature, not just the elements. I previously had issues understanding the deeper meaning of texts because I was really only taught to look at the obvious elements. I will take this in to account when developing my reading instruction in my own classroom.
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