" A carefully monitored independent reading
program is the single most important part of your reading instructional
program." (Routman, 87)
Many teachers and administrators assume that the way
to improve students' reading proficiency is by doing lots of comprehension
instruction and whole-class and small-group work. However, the reality has been
less-successful-than-expected results. What is the problem here? Routman's
suggestion is to add more independent reading. According to Routman,
independent reading means that students get to read a book of their choice
during an allotted block of time on a daily basis with teacher carefully
monitoring the process. The reading is then followed by a teacher-student
conference during which teacher assesses student's reading progress and new
reading goals are set.
Why is independent reading so important? First of
all, large amount of research has shown that students who read more, read
better and have higher reading achievement. Independent reading provides students with the opportunity to do
massive amount of real reading. Second, independent reading is fun because
students can choose to read something they are interested in. What is ironic is
that when teachers are pressed for time, independent reading is usually the
first thing to be cut.
As I was reading this section of my book, I could
not help thinking about how much independent reading my students get to do in
my class. The answer? None. In fact, the idea of independent reading has never
occurred to me when I try to improve my students' reading proficiency by a few
grade levels during a period of 15 weeks. Just a few days ago, during a
conversation with a reading teacher from another college, she asked what novels
we read and I laughed at her question because we never had the time to read a
novel. What do we do in our reading classroom? It is a lot of comprehension instruction,
drill practice, and projects. The reason why our reading program is structured
this way is that we are here to prepare our students to read expository college
textbooks and other related course materials. With that as our mission,
independent reading seems to have no place in our curriculum. However, Routman
has cited a longstanding, highly respected body of research to show the value
to free-choice voluntary reading in classrooms. I really can see the value of
independent reading and have been thinking about how to incorporate it into our
developmental reading program.
One thing Routman mentioned that might fit into my
teaching practice is computerized reading-incentive program. She says those
programs seem to work because students are required to read for long blocks of
time. She did not go into any detail about how those computerized reading
programs were structured, which I would like to find out more about it. If
these computerized reading program are as interesting as the traditional independent
reading Routman has highly recommended, I can see it working well with adult
readers. In our reading program, we have
one hour per week required lab time which could be used for the
computerized reading-incentive program. This is something I would like to look
into.
The high value of independent reading has been my stance for a while. I read daily (mostly late at night); my kids however don't like to read which is ironic because they have interesting books but need me to nudge them or to even require it at home. Both their schools encourage independent reading.
ReplyDeleteOn the other hand, whenever I planned a trip for my students in the past I usually added in a stop to the book store so that they could purchase one or two books to read at home. (I did this because parental financial priority was not literature). They loved this and were even wanting to buy books for their siblings. My principal began to discourage this because she asked me how do I know they are reading at home? And wanted me to require a book report for proof that they read their books. Kids got discouraged and little did she know that when kids read they share which was my way of connecting with the students: not requiring any proof in the form of school work but to share their books' interesting parts or characters and even settings that they wanted to visit someday. They were becoming independent readers away from school.
I think the take home message of this chapter is definitely the importance of independent reading, but also that the students get to pick their reading material. In school these days, we have taken the student's interests and choice out and put in mandatory textbooks and reading programs. They take the fun out of reading. I think we need to put the fun back in by allowing the kids to choose from a large array of books and let them enjoy reading.
ReplyDeleteIt is a great suggestion. Adding independent reading is a motivating way to develop students' reading proficiency. Teachers need to activate this strategy rather than focusing on lots of comprehension instruction and whole-class and small-group work. I wonder how to facilitate this way by letting students read a book of their choice if most students, Saudi students in my context, do not like to read and if they read, they do not enjoy reading. Most of them consider reading as a task to be completed, not an interesting way of learning, improving, and the like. However, I believe that independent reading and reading about what you like are motives themselves and as you mentioned above.
ReplyDeleteWhat a great idea. I found this to be the best way for me to become a better reader in my own life. I soon got into independent reading on my own and not in a class and was surprised to find that when I read something because I wanted to read it and not because it was assigned was extremely helpful. To include this kind of thing into a classroom assignment is very interesting and exciting. I feel you should definitely try to incorporate this in your teaching.
ReplyDeleteI have found that having students sustain independent silent reading has been SOOOOO effective! I have my second graders read 20-30 minutes every day independently, quietly. It works, it works for us as adults too.
ReplyDeleteIndepndent reading is waht I enjoy as a reader. A couple years ago, I worked on trying to make silent sustained reading a part of our entire school's day with all students reading at the same time. It seems so easy. Everyone reads what ever they want. But, making it happen at a school wide level was surprisingly difficult. There was such variation in success (as measured in terms of students actually reading) from class to class. I found the classes that were the most successful were the ones where students had access to a lot of different books, were able to share their thoughts on what they read with others, and in which the teacher set the tone of loving to read and modeling reading what she enjoyed and finding time to talk to students about what they were reading.
ReplyDelete