While I continue to read from the book No More Independent Reading Without Support by Debbie Miller and Barbara Moss I keep coming back to "one of biggest teacher concerns about IR...relates to engaged reading." I can say that this is an important concept that I find myself questioning each day. What can I do to ensure that my students are engaged in what they are reading. While teaching high school, I find my female students are a little more willing to and interested in reading when the time is given. I am currently working to build a more interesting and broader range of topics provided in my classroom library for my students to choose from, but am also looking at options of working on how to truly know my students are engaged.
Miller and Moss stated that when "students are engaged in their reading , they can read for longer periods of time, read through more difficult texts and increase their reading achievement." After reading this statement I felt it was crucial to make sure that I find books that my students can find themselves engaged in to help build reading achievement. Over the past few weeks, I have noticed with two specific students some improvement in reading fluency and reading comprehension since we have been working harder with book selection. I plan to continue to work harder to help these students in book selection over the next few weeks and hopefully see more gains in the reading levels!
Absolutely--engagement is the first step! It is literally first among Serravallo's reading assessment lenses, and she says, "Without engagement, we've got nothing." I love how you are thinking critically about the choices of texts students have access to in your classroom library. I was telling Elizabeth about NewsELA and she says this has been a wonderful resource for her students--I don't know if you already use it or not, but it might be worth a try! How exciting to have already noticed those students grow in their fluency and comprehension!
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