Dawn Mitchell's August Blog Post 1: Finding Time for Independent Reading

Dawn Mitchell's August Blog Post 1

In Section I of Debbie Miller’s No More Independent Reading Without Support she writes that children learn to read by reading but not without support.  I love this challenge she gives us at the beginning of her book and I definitely think it is relevant to us at the beginning of this school year. 

Miller writes, “What if there were a way out? What if there were a way – at least for part of the day – where things slowed down, your students had their hands and minds on great books, and you had the pleasure of conferring with them about their reading and themselves as readers?  No rotations, activities, or worksheets – just you, your kids, and books. If you could find a way out, would you take it?”

Miller explains that independent reading isn’t just Sustained Silent Reading where everyone stops, drops, and reads, the teacher included.  She explained that truly effective independent reading provides an instructional component, an application component, and a formative assessment component so that students have support during independent reading time.  Miller advocates for a reading workshop model.  She knows that to do this well, there has to be a consistent block of time during the school day.

This time is an investment into the workshop structure.  It is an investment into independent reading and more than that, it is an investment into each one of our students.

For the last fourteen years of my teaching career I have worked to implement workshop structure for both writing and reading where students have a supportive context for their application of real world literacy skills.  I know first-hand how we, as teachers struggle against the clock for time to make this meaningful work happen.  This was the first roadblock I had when implementing reading/writing workshop into my own fourth grade class over a decade ago and it is still the first instructional roadblock I always hear from the wonderful teachers I work with.  We don’t have enough time.  I agree.  There never is enough time. 

Time is the great equalizer.  We all have the same amount, each and every day.  Since we cannot make any more time, I agree with Miller that it is worth our time to carefully examine our schedule and look closely for the time that is hiding.  There is time, chunks of it hiding in the minutes of morning work we do to keep kids on task while we take attendance.  I have found a little time here and a little time there in transitions that take too long or routines that may not be necessary to extend all morning.  Debbie also asked to take a long look at our existing reading block and to see if we were really using our time to engage students.  Do they really need the packets of worksheets, the isolated times for all of the activities in the basal reader…? 

I know from my own experience when I moved from a scripted program to an authentic workshop structure where I used time for independent reading and writing, for formative assessments to help me know who my students were as readers and writers, and what skills and strategies they were and were not using to make meaning I could design mini lessons to specifically target what they needed to work on.  This wasn’t always easy, but it was fulfilling and everyone in the classroom grew, including me.  I used every resource I had to create lessons and it was constantly changing because my students were. 

I love how Debbie explains the difference between SSR and reading workshop on page 7.  She says, “When students sit quietly at their desk with a book or magazine during DEAR or Sustained Silent Reading (SSR) time, we might see them flip a page every minute or so, but we can’t see what’s happening inside their heads.  We don’t have evidence of how they’re making meaning of the text, the specific ways they’ve grown as readers, or what they’re struggling with as they read.  Without that information, we can’t teach them how to get better and we can’t be sure that – even if they read every day – all students are becoming better readers this week than they were the one before.”

With knowing already before school begins that we have only 180 days to do the best we can with the time we have, it is vital that we utilize the most effective methods possible.  I want to know that my students are growing.  I want to see evidence of them applying what they are learning in their independent reading.  I want to give this year all I’ve got.  I want to give them independent reading with support.

Sincerely,

Dawn