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“A long-standing, highly respected body of research definitively shows that students who read more, read better, and have higher reading achievement. You need to familiarize yourself with this research, because the value of free-choice voluntary reading in classrooms has recently been called into question”.
-from “Reading Essentials” by Regie Routman
Is Independent Reading A Waste of Precious Class Time?
It depends on how you're using it. No, it's not a waste for students to keep a book in their desks to read whenever they finish their work; this is much preferred to drawing, talking, or general 'free time'. There's a lot of research showing that students who read for at least 30 minutes in class every day score better on standardized tests and have higher reading comprehension levels. However, that research also points out that reading time must be regular, uninterupted, and structured independent reading time, and it's the STUCTURE that most of us leave out. Teachers must monitor what students are reading and teach children to choose books appropriate for their reading level and interests, and students should be logging what they read and reflecting upon it either formally or informally.
This time was mandatory when I taught up north; in my current school system, it’s not required or even emphasized. There has been talk of lengthening the school day to include time for it (which will never happen because it would cost millions to pay teachers for the extra time), but my question is, what else are we mandated to do that it more important than having students actually spend time READING? It’s not whether kids should be doing voluntary free-choice reading in school, it’s how can we make the time meaningful for them.
Note: As of 10/21/07, I do not use reader's workshop or structured silent reading time in my classroom because my new school has a prescribed reading curriculum that does not include this component. This page described the practices I used in 2006-2007.
The Difference Between Independent Reading Variations
The process that I'm advocating here is technically called Reader's Workshop. It can also be referred to as Independent Reading. Other programs in which students read books of their own choosing silently are called Sustained Silent Reading (SSR) or Drop Everything and Read (DEAR). The difference between these last two programs (and their counterparts which most teachers use) is that the time is unstructured and there is very little monitoring. Children typically choose books and read to themselves while the teacher grades papers. Reader's Workshop is highly structured, which is why it's effective. With my kids, I call it SSR- Self-Selected Reading because I don't always require them to read independently, but they do always choose their own books. (We use other 'workshops' and I didn't want to include that term again and confuse them). For the purposes of this page, I'll call it Independent Reading Time, just as Regie Routman does.
What Students Do During Independent Reading Time
Children should be self-selecting reading materials that are interesting to them: novels, magazines, comics, etc. You can use your conference time, as discussed below, to ensure students are reading a variety of materials and that they are choosing texts on their level.
Remember that students, like adults, are more motivated to read when the subject matter is interesting to them, so if we want kids to read, we need to give them opportunities to figure out what they like and spend time with those materials. After all, if you love mysteries and fashion magazines, you’re not going to pick up a science fiction book or fishing and hunting magazine, and that’s okay. Students can develop the habits of good readers using whatever materials they select. Independent reading time may be the only time of the day in which they are not told exactly what to read.
Students should be keeping a record of their independent reading (reading log) of some sort if they are in grades 2 and above, and can keep a simpler form in younger grades if you want. There is more about reading records further down this page.
I encourage you to allow students to respond to the texts they select during independent reading time in ways that are natural for them. Some kids will just want to read, which is great (and to be expected in the younger grades). Others will want to keep detailed summaries in their reading logs, or write down quotes and passages they like. They may want to write down other books they want to read about the topic, or make notes for themselves to follow up on an idea. Whatever you have modeled for students, they will want to do! These are habits of good readers and we want to encourage them: when I read professional books, I frequently write down ideas I want to use; when I read novels, I sometimes am reminded of a movie I want to see or food I want to try, and I jot those down somewhere, too. I would be very frusterated if I were told that I couldn’t do anything except read for thirty minutes, at which point all the connections to my own life would be lost, so I don’t push that reading-only on my students. The vast majority of students’ independent reading time will be spent reading, but don’t be afraid to let them interact with their reading materials just because it’s unconventional.
I also think it's important to allow students to be comfortable during their independent reading time. All of my kids choose a special spot they can go to read if they would rather not be at their desks. I reserve the right to ask a child to choose a new spot any time they become disruptive or distracted by the people who are near them. My particular group of kids this year are allowed to choose new spots whenever they want- most ask me every few weeks, "Can I move my spot to __?" and I almost always approve. Other classes need far more structure with this process- a great way to manage reading spots and ensure that everyone gets equal access to the most coveted places in the room can be found on Mrs. Newingham's Book Nooks page.
What The Teacher Does During Independent Reading Time
On some days, you can use the time to read something of your choice (a professional magazine, book of poems- whatever you are interested in that is appropriate for the children to see). This provides a great model for the kids: let them see that you, too, choose reading as a valuable and pleasurable activity.
Primarily, however, the teacher should use independent reading time to conference with students.
The Purpose of Holding Conferences
Students' independent reading needs to be closely monitored to make sure kids are achieving the goals you've set together. To do this, you'll need to conference with students individually. Doing this during independent reading time allows you the rare opportunity to get to know the children's personalities, interests, strengths, and weaknesses individually during a time when all other students are meaningfully and quietly engaged. Just a few of the key purposes for these conferences are to ensure that students are:
-selecting books on their reading level
-understanding what they read
-progressing in their fluency
-reading a variety of texts
-using reading strategies you’ve taught them
How To Manage and Schedule Conferences
Set up a schedule for conferencing that meets your kids needs and fits into your specific teaching context. You can meet with 1-3 kids per day so that each child has a conference monthly. Primary-level students will need more frequent conferences than those who are basically fluent readers (third grade and above). You may want to check in with struggling readers more often. For example, you could meet with 2 kids daily Monday-Thursday for 5-10 minutes each. Then, on Fridays, you could do quick follow-ups with children that you think need more guidance.
What To Do During Conferences
Have the student bring the book s/he is currently reading and his/her reading log to the conference. In your conferences, you can have the child read excerpts aloud to you, give oral re-tellings, reflect on their book choices and progress, set goals, etc. Conference details are beyond the scope of this website, but I have compiled some great resources for conferences:
Questions to ask students during conferences
Colorful printable cards with questions to ask students about their reading during conferences
Assessment During Conferences
You can take anecdotal records, use a checklist, create index cards, organize a binder with a section for each child, or use any other system that allows you to keep meaningful notes about children’s independent reading. In general, most researchers emphasize that students should not be graded on independent reading, so you don’t have to include anything about it in your gradebook. Students are reading for the sake of reading itself, so we as teachers can enjoy this time without making it more complicated than it needs to be.
Here is a great reading conference notes form with questions to ask students. There's a well-designed corresponding reader's thinking sheet that students can fill out prior to the conference to help focus their thinking when they're talking with you- just remember to keep actual reading, not filling out forms, the focus of your independent reading time. If it's not helping a child reflect, there's no point in using it.
Teaching Procedures for Independent Reading
Lots of modeling is key here, just like every other classroom routine. Decide on guidelines for your students, such as these suggested by Regie Routman in her book, "Reading Essentials”:
-Be sure the book you are reading is one you like and understand
-Have with you as many books as you might need for the entire period
-Once you have selected your place to read, stay there
-Read quietly
-Maintain a reading record (essential for grade 2 and above; optional for younger students)
Start with a short amount of time, such as 10 minutes, and walk around to make sure kids are able to follow the guidelines. Gradually increase the amount of time students are expected to read independently to 20-30 minutes per day, and when you are confident students can be on-task during that time, begin holding conferences. Remember that conferences don't have to be held back-to-back, so you can interact with and redirect children as needed between conferences. You will probably want to teach your students not to interupt conferences except for emergencies, just like you do for reading groups.
Here's an independent reading rubric you can use to teach children expectations and help them regulate their behavior.
I highly recommend the book below ("Guiding Readers and Writers" by Fountas and Pinnell)because it provides sample scripted mini-lessons for the first 20 days of Reader's Workshop or SSR. I found it at my local library and it has been invaluable to me. If you aren't able to get the book, you can get a few ideas for mini-lessons here.
Individual Book Boxes
It's easier for students to remain meaningfully engaged in reading when they have a variety of self-selected texts available. While some teachers allow their students to go to the classroom library as needed to choose new books, this can be distracting, especially with younger students who read shorter books and may need to make multiple trips to the library (at the same time as their friends, coincidentally) during every independent reading block.
Many teachers, myself included, have individual book boxes or baskets for their students. You can have students decorate cereal boxes with photos and pictures of books they like and topics they enjoy reading about (see below), but if the kids put more than a few books inside, the boxes will start to fall apart and the pictures peel off after awhile. I invested in sturdy plastic book bins (about $70 for a set of 20, but they are used all day long and will last for years, so I think it's worth it). Click here to see how Mrs. Newingham uses book boxes.
Choosing 'Just Right' Books
Teach kids the difference between being able to decode text and being able to comprehend it. Regie Routman suggests reading to them a portion of a text that is too difficult for you to understand (an article on technology, a college-level science textbook- whatever you have little background knowledge about). Then try to give a summary of what you just read, emphasizing that even though you could use reading strategies to figure out the words, you still don’t understand what you’re reading. Then read a portion of a book that is just right for you and give a short re-telling, emphasizing that you know the book is right for you because you can tell about what you’ve read.
There are many strategies you can teach students for choosing 'just-right' books. The photo above shows the chart (left) that my second graders created with me. I asked them how they could tell a book was too easy and too hard and wrote their words. Then I introduced the 5 Finger Test and wrote that on the chart as a guideline for how to tell if a book is just right. The 5 Finger Test is when children open a book to a page somewhere in the middle and begin reading. They hold up 1 finger each for each word they can't decode or comprehend. If they hold up 5 fingers for one page, the book is probably too hard for now and they should choose another.
Here are the kid-friendly criteria for choosing just-right books from Patricia Cunningham's 4 Blocks.
Keeping Authentic and Meaningful Reading Logs
Reading Records for In-Class Reading
Most teachers have kids keep a record of the books they read in class and at home, and require parents to sign off on the redaing record. In "Reading Essentials", Regie Routman urges teachers to look for authentic methods for students to record the books they read: she suggests that the teacher keep her own record and see what works for her. As adults, we would never write how many minutes we read each night or track how many pages we read, much less have someone sign it to verify that we actually spent time reading! Instead, we might record the book title and author, genre, and a short sentence to jog our memories about what the book was about. Whatever we find authentic, Regie suggests, is what we should teach our kids to do.
I’m going to have my kids keep a notebook in any format they want: composition book, a beautiful journal, a trendy little notebook or binder, etc. If their parents don’t want to buy them something, I’ll have extra composition books for them to decorate. I know I prefer writing in something that brings me pleasure to look at, and I know students will, too.
I’m going to model, model, model how kids should keep a reading log but allow them to modify as it fits their needs. Some children will probably want to draw a picture for each book, others will want to write long summaries and include quotes from the books, others will want to write the title and author and that’s it. I’m going to show them my reading log and get them excited about it, then trust them to use a system that is meaningful for them.
You can download free reader's notebooks pages from Mrs. Newingham's site.
This is a picture of the reading log one of my students uses amd her book box. Book boxes are explained on the classroom library page.
Ms. Gold uses 'Life Books' with her students- a cool idea!
Reading Records for Home Reading
Regie Routman says on pg. 36 of her book, “When procedures and expectations are clear, modeled, and negotiated, students can take charge of simple record keeping… I much prefer that students assume this responsibility and share their reading accomplishments with their families in a relaxed, enjoyable manner. Such as process saves us teachers time and energy, too, as we no longer have to ‘check’ a monitoring system.”
She stresses that teachers should respect parents’ busy schedules and not require them to sign off on logs, especially since children should be creating the logs primarily for their own use, so parent follow-up should be unnecessary. Not having sign-offs also saves the teacher time since she doesn’t have to check them.
'Now Books, Next Books'
Good readers are always thinking ahead about what they might like to read next, and that's an important concept to teach our students. As part of their reading records/logs, or as something seperate, kids should keep a list of books they want to read. You might call this their 'What's Next?' list or 'Now Books/ Next Books'. They can use a notebook if they like and staple online book reviews or internet info they find about a book or topic they might like to check out. Be sure to keep a list like this for yourself to use for modeling with the kids: explicitly teach them how to use their lists whenever they think of something they might like to read. For example, you might tell about a TV show on which an author appeared, and show kids where you wrote down the author's name so that the next time you are at the library, you could look for the book. Or, you might explain that you were talking to a friend and she mentioned a new cookbook or exercise method or vacation spot that interested you, so you wrote it down in order to research that topic later in a bookstore. When kids are voluntarily doing this on their own, we know we've succeeded in making reading records authentic and meaningful, and more importantly, in creating life-long readers.
Exposing Kids to Various Genres
Good readers know their reading preferences and can choose books that interest them. That means kids need explicit instruction in the various genres, and classifying the books in your classroom library by genre can help with this. As you add new books, have kids discuss which genre they think the books belong to: this can spark a very heated debate in which children have to think critically as they defend their point of view. You can also reinforce genre concepts by keeping a class record of the stories in your basal and your read-alouds, noting the title, author, and genre. Additionally, students can note in their reading logs the genres of the books they choose for independent reading. If you want to expose kids to different kinds of books and make sure they have tried reading at least one book from each genre in your library, try using a structured independent reading form like the one I created a few years ago. You can change it to fit the genres you have in your library. (See the Class Library page for ways to sort and label books). Students used the form to record when they had read books of each genre- they had until the end of the year to complete it, and then reflected on which they preferred and why. Mrs. Newingham has the genre posters you see below, plus more incredible and free downloads that I use in my room, including genre logs and graphs.
Other Ideas For Independent Reading: Read-Alouds and Student Sharing
You may want to begin your independent reading time with a read-aloud or a book talk/review (see the Classroom Libraries page), or end with a time for students to share a favorite passage or something they learned from their reading. Here's an example schedule of how to include these elements and another example from 4 Blocks. My only caution is that you make sure students are still getting the full 30 minutes of independent reading time- it's easy to let other elements take over.
More Resources
Obviously "Reading Essentials" by Regie Routman is a key resource. This book changed my entire perspective on reading instruction, and I've seen it do the same for many of my colleagues, including Mandy Gregory, who uses Routman's ideas in her Reading Workshops.
Here are some goal-setting sheets, tracking forms, and reading response pages in English and Spanish from Stenhouse publishers. These are great resources to get you thinking, but remember to strive for authentic and meaningful reading logs that are customized for your students.
Here's an SSR explanation with photos from 4 Blocks.
Click here for ways to arrange, organize, and utilize your classroom library on the Class Library page.
Mrs. Gregory has added many invaluable resources for getting kids hooked on reading: book talks, book passes, reader's theater, and more.
Nancy Keane has listed thousands of suggested book titles for various themes, topics, genre, values, author studies, and so on.
I'll be adding lots to this page over the summer, so please check back!
Please click on a link below to purchase items: a portion of the sales will benefit the site at no cost to you!
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