Jinger Willard Blog Post 6 (Jan./Feb.): Routman Chapter 6: Plan for and Monitor Independent Reading

This chapter in Routman re-emphasizes the importance of providing substantial independent reading time in the classroom each day.  Not only should there be time dedicated for this, but this time should be planned for and monitored.  With the increased pressure of standardized testing, independent reading often is the first to go as many teachers feel the need to spend that time preparing students to pass a state mandated test.  When I look back at my elementary school years, specific grade levels stand out to me where we had a dedicated time for independent reading.  I can specifically remember this time in 4^th grade when we called the time D.E.A.R (Drop Everything and Read).  During this time the entire school would stop what they are doing, including teachers, and read for a sustained 20-30 minute block of time.  Over my past 20 years as an educator, I have seen similar initiatives come and go all called different things such as DEAR, SSR (Sustained Silent Reading), or Read to Self (Daily 5).  Some years they were mandated and others not.  All of these initiatives revolved around the same premise, the more kids read, the better readers they will become.  I do not think this is a new finding, but the approach that Routman discusses, and that we are now taking to independent reading time, is significantly different.  In order for teachers to implement the effective type of independent reading Routman discusses in this chapter, they will need to be educated on how to do this.  It is one thing to read about the research, theories and examples, but it is a much different story to put it into practice.  This chapter provides a good starting place.

My approach to reading instruction has shifted quite a bit over the years.  As an educator in North Carolina, I spent my first couple of years in “survival mode”.  I did not learn how to “teach reading” through my college courses.  We learned about the theories of whole language and phonics instruction, but at no point in time was I taught how to put theory into practice. During my rookie years, I most often used the basal text interchangeably with novels.  Sometimes we read novels as a class and when I was feeling really confident, we did novels in groups and sometimes had literature circles.  As my district began to adopt new reading curriculum, there was a big push to implement “guided reading” in our classrooms.  Much time and money was spent training teachers and buying materials in order to create and run guided reading groups.  The use of novels and basal texts was discouraged.  Instead we used short, leveled readers with our groups.  In the past 5 years, the shift has been towards the Daily 5 model. In my last district it was mandated that all classrooms were to be “doing Daily 5”. Independent reading was a part of each of these models, but in most it was used as more of another activity rather than the core of reading instruction as Routman suggests.  This chapter gave many insightful and useful suggestions for how to make independent reading an effective, central part of reading instruction in the classroom no matter what type of reading program is being used or model is being followed.