Rachel Johnson, blog 1-August, Miller Ch. 1

            In the first chapter of her book Debbie Miller discusses the importance of independent reading time.  She stresses that independent reading time, or IR, is an essential part of the day.  In order for students to grow as readers they must have time to read-every day.  During this time of independent reading, students are able to practice the reading skills and strategies they have learned in class.  Does this sound like a great idea but there is not enough time in the day for IR to happen each day?  Miller offers a solution to this common argument-take a close look at what you are spending time on.  More than likely, there are areas of the day that can be shortened or taken out completely to make time independent reading.

            This chapter really hit home for me this year.  I teach on a three switch team and my team teachers and I looked at the schedule at the beginning of the year to see how we could expand the time for each block.  Since adding more hours to the school day was not an option we looked at how we were spending our time.  Previously, we did not start teaching until 8:10 because we were waiting for WAME and vision students to return to class and students were completing morning work packets.  We spent 5-8 minutes switching classes twice a day because we would take the whole class to the restroom in between each switch.   The list grew as we thought about our daily schedule.  While individually none of the above items was a giant time consumer, if you put them all together the time added up. 

            This year we start our teaching blocks at 7:45.  We have cut down transitions to 1-2 minutes by taking out the class restroom breaks.  I now have an hour and half with each block-something I never had before.  I have found that I am able to cover my lessons more thoroughly and have more lively class discussions.  Furthermore, even though I teach science and social studies I am now able to give students about 10 minutes of IR in my classroom most days.  While 10 minutes is not a lot, this is something I have never had the time to do before.  Students now get IR time in their ELA block and a small IR time in my room.  I am also able to incorporate more content reading into my science and social studies lessons.

            I am looking forward to seeing my students grow as readers through the IR time and increased content reading in my science and social studies classes this year.