Blog Post #4

As I continue to read No More Independent Reading Without Support by Miller and Moss I have noticed a shift into making the students more responsible for not only the reading, but the thinking during Independent Reading.  As the authors say, “Talking about text together not only improves comprehension and makes children aware of how they can use strategies according to the kind of text and the demands it places on them as readers, but also motivates them to read independently so they’ll have something to talk about with their peers.  Students need teacher scaffolds toward independent talk.”  This really hit home to me this week not only during the Independent Reading time of my school day, but during my science classroom time.  I am making a shift from being the one at the front of the room giving all the information, to having my students do investigations and telling me why this happened.  It also makes them more accountable for the learning.  When I asked my students to turn and talk to their neighbor during the investigation, I received some strange looks.  I then had to back up and explain what I wanted them to do.  These strategies can work with other subjects than just reading, but we can’t expect students to just know what to talk about.  We need to guide them with the types of questions we use. 

This week during Independent Reading, we started a read aloud on the book The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe I started using think alouds as I was reading.  Again the students looked at me as if I had lost my mind, but once I started thinking aloud the students started doing this and have become more engaged in the read aloud process.  They don’t want me to ever stop reading.  I had to explain to them that they need time to read books of their choice independently.   The book also states that, “We’ve come full circle now—children have had explicit teaching in a focus lesson, they have had opportunities during IR to practice applying

 it, and now they come back together to talk about what they’ve discovered.  These daily opportunities for teaching and learning set this instructional framework apart from programs like Drop Everything and Read (DEAR) and Sustained Silent Reading.”  I want to add the come back together part to my Independent Reading, but I guess I let time slip away from me while my students are reading.  I hope that one day I will be able to make Independent Reading a more valuable and important time for my students as long as I keep striving to improve this time with my students.