Lynn Flake -- Routman 6&7 -- Plan and Monitor Independent Reading

I loved this chapter! I wanted to read it because I know that I’m really good at providing independent reading time daily. However, the monitoring part is still a little tricky sometimes. That being said, I feel like I’ve made huge gains in that area this year. I believe that providing independent reading time (with support) is the most critical part of not just our ELA block, but is key for integrating other subjects as well. I felt good that many of the strategies Routman talks about are already well established routines in my classroom.

I am working on getting my students to dig deeper during reading time. I want to get past those superficial “what is the setting?” questions and really get my kids to analyze and think beyond the text. I fully believe that at this point in the year, each one of my students is capable of this kind of thinking, with a level appropriate text. However, the word “analyze” seems to make some of my kids freeze up – so we’re working on that! J

My kids (for the most part) absolutely do not care about a page number reading goal. Trying to get them to log pages, even for prizes is like pulling teeth. This was very frustrating to me in the beginning of the year. One thing I realized about my kids is how slowly some of them read (compared to myself). With page goals, many of my kids race through reading, this is where they can’t remember details, don’t pay attention to the characters, and just skip words they don’t know without ever coming back to decode. I have spent a lot of time since November working with my students on their stamina goal. We’ve talked about how people need 60-90 minutes a day of reading to grow healthy readers. My kids understand that just like their bodies need exercise, so does their brain. As a class, we’ve been keeping track of our stamina goals and the amount of time they spend reading. I’ve noticed that by making that the focus, my kids are reading better and many of them are making their page goals. Yay!

Aside from conferencing, I have the kids use sticky notes a lot to monitor independent reading time.  Another tool that we’ve started using across the grade level to monitor independent reading time is a rubric. I love this because I do think our kids should get credit/graded for something that they’re doing every day. It’s a great way to see if they’re meeting expectations and it is also something that I can send home weekly to communicate progress with parents! Out of all of our PLC’s for the year, the one that we talked about setting up those rubrics was possibly my favorite.