I'm coming at this topic with complete humility: ❶ I've never felt confident about it in my own classroom ❷ Quite often it has felt like wasted time in classrooms ❸ We definitely need to create + nourish a love of reading ❹ When everyone is reading their own thing, it's harder to build community - ThreadSky

marcusluther.bsky.social • 3 days ago

I'm coming at this topic with complete humility:

❶ I've never felt confident about it in my own classroom
❷ Quite often it has felt like wasted time in classrooms
❸ We definitely need to create + nourish a love of reading
❹ When everyone is reading their own thing, it's harder to build community

Reposted from Marcus Luther

So how are folks thinking/feeling about silent, independent reading in the classroom these days?

Comments

eisraeldavis.bsky.social•3 days ago

I share with humility that it's a practice I generally no longer support.

It is based on research which many concluded showed that students become better readers by reading. It's not that this doesn't have truth to it. It's just that they first have to be explicitly taught and then learn to read.

eisraeldavis.bsky.social•3 days ago

What I'm not saying is that I think it's never a good practice.

I don't know your, or anyone else's students and context. It might be right for you one day but not the next. Well educated and informed teachers (in concert with their students) are the best decision makers for their classes.

eisraeldavis.bsky.social•3 days ago

Trust your gut on those 4 reasons.

marcusluther.bsky.social•3 days ago

I'm sort of in a similar space! especially as a secondary teacher

eisraeldavis.bsky.social•3 days ago

Figuring out how to support secondary students in learning word recognition skills has so many difficult layers.

Julie Burtscher Brown has done some great work around this. I don't think she's come over here yet but she's on the bad place.

eisraeldavis.bsky.social•3 days ago

I'm wrong! She is here.

I feel weird tagging her but if you add the @ that's her account.

julie-b-brown.bsky.social

copeland1.bsky.social•2 days ago

It was more about building communities around reading than improving reading skills (though I do think practice helped kids get better). I integrated it with tech instruction in 4th grade. We used Google sheets to track books we had finished and the class celebrated when a new book was added.

gplastrik.bsky.social•2 days ago

To #4 ...not if you make and create space for sharing about their reading and building a community of people who support each other as readers.
It is a lot like building a community of writers. Your sentence bulletin board is an example that easily translates to reading.

mspetersonmiddle7.bsky.social•2 days ago

1 within 2 weeks it’s the practice I’m most confident with all year long
2 at the very least/worst Ss are ready for class to begin
3 time for me to latch on to title that someone is reading, ? them - everyone gets the benefit of convo
4 community = - it’s the most self/ peer regulated “shh!” time

msmml.bsky.social•3 days ago

I have given it up in my classes. We have university and college classes in Ontario for grades 11 and 12. University level classes will read, college ones - nope. We start class with 15 mins of reading. Many come late to skip it. I went back to a core novel. I get it, but no. Too much fake reading.

daniellekay.bsky.social•2 days ago

It was a lifeline for me as a student. The reset of quiet, setting aside everything else on my mind to get absorbed in a story—time felt different.

And, when I taught HS ELA, it just didn't work in my classroom. My students were still very early readers & it was a stressor for them, not a reset.

jessenathaniel.bsky.social•3 days ago

The way I’ve always thought about it is that if we want students reading rich texts — even at their independent reading level—then they probably benefit from some level of guidance / discussion of perspectives to really appreciate it. So …IDK… bc I get the appeal of encouraging free reading habits 🤷🏾‍♂️

marcusluther.bsky.social•3 days ago

100%! And I know if I have 100+ students reading 100+ different books, my level of guidance/support is definitely limited, especially with class sizes in the 30+ range (I do think book clubs offer a good intermediary option to this)

tiamobarton.bsky.social•3 days ago

Allowing students to choose their books keeps them engaged in reading. Reporting out during IRT promotes books and builds community. My students learned about a wide variety of books from their peers. They knew who was reading which series/books, kept tabs on who got the books next and shared well.

bnjmnkwdcck.bsky.social•2 days ago

Students and I report out weekly with a Reading Roll Call activity. Keeping tabs occurs with this activity along with accountability of sharing the title. We also get to practice speaking and listening skills.

marcusluther.bsky.social•3 days ago

Also: I think it's really unfair to those who are doing silent/independent reading as a system well to let those who are "mailing it in" ruin that system for them.

Also: I think it's incumbent upon those who believe that silent/independent reading is going well to have more data than just "vibes"

leakelley.bsky.social•3 days ago

My middle schoolers read 15-20 minutes every single day, and it’s a lot of work to get there but it’s totally worth it. We see a ton of growth over the 2-3 years that we do this.

lynnelainece.bsky.social•2 days ago

I have been doing it for years & struggled with giving up that time, but then I remember a student who walked in the room, plopped down in one of the comfy reading chairs, grabbed his book from his backpack, exhaled, and said, “yes, time to turn all the noise down for a bit.”

thevogelman.bsky.social•2 days ago

It’s not an everyday routine in my classroom, but I have seen students take on texts more challenging or in genres we don’t assign, discovering more joy in their reading. Introverts love it. And if we say reading matters in a busy life it feels like we should give some time for it during the day.

naemmanuele.bsky.social•2 days ago

Agreed, Brett! If reading is important, we have to carve time. Not everyone does math on their own for fun, not everyone reads on their own for fun, but we can build in time to increase student reading time and investment.

tiamobarton.bsky.social•2 days ago

Our curriculum states at my gr 3-4 level, students must read for 30 min/day.

thevogelman.bsky.social•2 days ago

I wrote about a Camelot moment in the middle school where I taught when we had 15 minutes built into the school schedule for it each day. That definitely built up the school community and built stamina. I miss it.

https://nerdybookclub.wordpress.com/2016/11/25/the-daily-read-how-it-changed-our-culture-by-brett-vogelsinger-lauren-johnston-kevin-shillingford-and-michelle-ambrosini/

lynnelainece.bsky.social•2 days ago

This. When we support their reading and share in it, they then share with each other. I have nothing but my observational data on this, but reading helps build community and independent thinking.

mraleosays.bsky.social•2 days ago

I don’t begrudge folks who’ve had success with it, but my thoughts/experiences echo your own. To be honest, there were even times where I felt like people really pushing it framed it in an intensely consumerist kind of way. Like reading as an act of consumption/accumulation, not community.

ugajoshuasmon.bsky.social•2 days ago

So many of my high school students don’t read. Anything. They are horrified by the thought. Too many years of forced annotations and only selections instead of full texts. They see no point. I am trying to choose texts for relevance and enjoyment to spark joy again.

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