Independent Reading Matters

 As a teacher,  I love sharing ideas.  I hope by sharing my experiences and ideas I help you set up your classroom to yield the results you plan for in your lessons.


Let's turn the tables for a minute.

My small groups are set,  I've chose materials, and I set a schedule, but what are the rest of the students doing during this time?

Independent Reading

To set up Independent Reading, I do several  mini  lessons, but not necessarily in this particular order.

What is the students job and what is the teachers job?
What does independent reading looks like and what does it sound  like?
Fake reading vs Real reading
How to choose just right book?
How to pick a Reading nook?
Expectations for Reading logs
How to respond to books?  (several days of teaching ways to respond to books)
How to use class library, how it is arranged?

These lessons take place in our class library:

Independent Reading expectations  definitely need to be in place in order to be able to pull your small groups.

Once I  complete these lessons,  I observe students reading habits.  I intervene and ask questions about their book choices, what their reading,  and sometimes insert a teaching point to move them as a reader.  These observations serve as another piece of data I can use to plan my small groups/whole class instruction.

Each day I give a quick mini lesson.  Lessons are based on my observations during independent reading. The lessons are meant to move readers along a continuum of what readers should be able to do as proficient readers.  Students will pull and post  a requested sticky note daily to a Stop and Jot parking lot board that is posted on the bulletin board near our library.

This chart not only serves as a tool for me to use, but also allows students to monitor and assess the quality of their responses.  Often times,  I see students go up to post and go back to  revise and edit their responses.  I usually have them do this in small groups after I sort and analyze them.  Of course,  students are not doing this at first.  I would discuss this during small group or whole group every day.  Soon the expectations were set.  Students were to read the criteria, decide where their stop and jot lie  along the rubric, and revise if it wasn't meeting grade level expectations (3).  Where as at the beginning of the year,  students just posted their stop and jots.  I taught students how to use the rubric to guide them toward more critical analysis of text they read. At the end of the day, I woulds pull  sticky notes, and sort them to form my small groups for the next day.

 Once they have been taught several ways to respond, I monitor to see what type of responses students are using the most.  So if every time they post the post is the same,  I conference with them  and suggest other possible responses they could be utilizing, and  at the same time discuss if they are  applying things I taught to their independent work.  As you see,  you  will have multiple pieces of data to inform your instruction.   Let data drive your instruction.

Once I have set up Independent Reading expectations, observed and made adjustments, usually after three weeks, only then do I start pulling small groups.  If independent reading is not in place and running smoothly neither will your small group instruction.

I am constantly modifying and adjusting as teachers are always doing to be more efficient and effective.

How do I hold kids accountable for skills or strategies  taught within a unit or small groups?  Stay tuned:  Reading response types matters.