Independent Reading Initiative

During my student teaching, I decided to implement an independent reading block. My 4th grade class had a twenty-minute block at the end of the day that was not very productive. My cooperating teacher and I believed independent reading would be effective since it would provide students with meaningful time to read something that interested them. To implement this, I used a section about setting up independent reading in the classroom during the first 20 days of school from Guiding readers and writers: Teaching comprehension, genre, and content literacy by Irene Fountas and Gay Su Pinnell. I narrowed down the most important behaviors, routines, and expectations I wanted my students to know such as selecting books, tracking reading progress, and setting up expectations for when, where, and how we would read during independent reading time. I also wanted to learn more about my students as readers so I conducted a modified version of The Reading and Library Survey from Meeting the needs of diverse learners by Paula Rutherford. After completing the surveys, students and I discussed what we learned including students favorite genres, favorite places to read, who they read with, whether they recommend books to friends, among other questions. I decided to focus my mini-lessons for independent reading on how to use our classroom library, selecting books, and keeping a record of their reading. Using the library was crucial for independent reading to be successful because prior to this, students seldom used the library so they werent familiar with its setup. Together we reviewed how it was organized by different categories like adventure, fairy tales, animals, favorite characters, etc. We also discussed the process of checking out books and when it was acceptable to do so. During our discussion on book selection, we talked about strategies to find books that would interest students like looking at the cover and reading the synopsis. We also discussed using the five-finger strategy when choosing just right books. Students also learned that it was acceptable to abandon a book, if they gave the book a try, but found it too easy, or too hard, or not as interesting as they initially thought. To keep a record of what they were reading, I created a simple reading log bookmark that required students to write the date, title of the book, and the number of pages they had read that day. After a couple of days of independent reading, students and I discussed what was going well and what we could improve. Through this discussion, we were able to create expectations for a successful independent reading block.

We had many successes. Students became more interested in reading and engaged while doing so. Many students discovered new series or authors that they liked. My teacher and I made sure to suggest books that students could find in our library that connected to our lessons. For example, we read The Butterfly by Patricia Polacco and several students started reading Anne Franks diary and other books about the Holocaust. Students also began to go above and beyond and a couple of students decided to do summaries of the books they were reading. Other students exceeded expectations by using sticky notes to keep track of new vocabulary they encountered, connections they were finding to other texts, and even examples of figurative language. Students looked forward to independent reading and I knew that they really enjoyed it when I asked if they wanted to read for ten more minutes and all students exclaimed Yay! Overall, implementing an independent reading block was a tremendous success in my classroom. Students learned to effectively use the classroom library and would actively find time to read, some would even read a book during recess. Students also gained ownership through this process of implementing the independent reading block because they determined how to make the best use of this time and assessed their progress accordingly.