India Rowe's November Blog Post: Miller (2013) Section 2: Why Not? What Works?

Section Two is about teacher practices that can help increase the effectiveness of independent reading.  The statistics that showed how independent reading time positively affected academic performance were impressive.  For example, one study showed that students who read independently an average of an hour a day scored at the 98^th percentile on standardized testing, while students who did not read outside of school scored at the 2^nd percentile.  The study showed a strong correlation between independent reading and achievement.  The difficult problem to solve is how to transition students from participating in independent reading time at school to choosing to read independently outside of school.  There are so many distractions competing for students’ attention.  Television, cell phones, tablets, and video games all vie for students’ free time outside of school.  My hope is that as I help guide my students to self-select books that they find engaging and on their level, reading a book outside of school could become a more attractive option during their free time.        

On page 20, the authors display a genre wheel that has students reading books from across genres.  This wheel is very similar to the genre quilt our grade level uses with our students.  Each nine weeks, the students have a required number of genres they need to read for their reading goal.  The students can select which genres they would like to read each nine weeks.  As they complete a book from a specific genre, the students color in that square on their quilts.  The goal is to have students read from a variety of different genres throughout the school year and to hopefully discover a previously unexplored genre that they now enjoy.

My challenge from this section is to be more intentional in planning my instructional reading time.  The authors state that “for independent reading to succeed, the teacher must be an active participant” (Miller & Moss, 2013, p. 39).  Currently, I do conference with students to monitor their progress on their reading goals and to check that the books that they are choosing are on their levels.  During this time, we also set goals and discuss independent reading habits.  However, I would like add more instruction related to reading strategies during independent reading and have students practicing specific skills with their books.  I would also like to give students more opportunities to talk about what they are reading in literacy circles with their peers.