Melissa Wells' Blog Post 2: No More Independent Reading without Support, Section 2

After a busy day at school, one of my favorite ways to decompress is to come home and read.  I read Facebook to find out all about what my friends and family members have been up to that day.  (And yes, I do count Facebook as a reading activity!)  However, a couple of days ago, I stumbled across this sponsored ad from Whirlpool:

I was disappointed that Whirlpool fell victim to the classic confusion between causation and correlation.  Clean clothes do not CAUSE students to have better attendance rates.  Rather, not having clean clothes may correlate with other factors that decrease attendance rates.   The National Reading Panel (as cited by Miller and Moss on p. 15) recognized that many studies on independent reading (IR) at the time of their report in 2000 focused on correlational, not causal, relationships between increased reading time and increased reading skills.  Even though the research they reviewed in 2000 could not single-handedly prove that IR caused improved achievement, ample research showed that a definite relationship between these two variable existed!

In this section, I noticed two main components of IR that contributed to improved achievement:  picking books and the teacher's role.  The students' reading of self-selected texts is the defining characteristic of IR.  It can be daunting, however, to navigate 20+ students reading 20+ self-selected texts!  Miller and Moss reminded me on p. 19 of the importance of providing students with explicit instruction in picking out these books.  For some students, their past experience with "choice" may have been limited to a certain dot, a certain level, a certain basket, or a pre-determined textbook.  We still need to coach our students to choose a best-fit book for them.  (And, of course, we need to consider carefully the organizational systems in our classroom libraries to assure ease of access to our texts!)  Once we've given that direct instruction over time, we gradually release the responsibility to the students to choose their own texts, which frees us up to do the most important work:  teaching!

I loved the quote on p. 39:  "...for IR to succeed, the teacher must be an active participant."  We are actively teaching during this time as we offer explicit instruction through mini-lessons and check in with individual students in their reading journeys through conferencing.  For this reason, I was so glad to read that the authors insist that striving and ELL readers need IR the most (p. 37)!  Sadly, I know of many kids over the years who fell into this category but who actually missed their IR time due to pull-out intervention.  We have the best intentions--we want our kids to receive high-quality, targeted instruction, but when this replaces IR, are we helping or hurting them?  Is IR the time where they are "just reading"--a wording that diminishes the crucial importance of this time--or is IR the time where they are actively growing as readers?  Do we skip IR when we have a time-crunched day, or is it the one thing we make time for no matter what?  If we were to analyze our schedules honestly, how much time would we find that students spend engaged in reading continuous text--not just reading-related tasks--on a daily basis?  These are sobering thoughts that still haunt me as I worry about my own former students, but by asking--and answering--these critical questions, we will be better able to meet the needs of all of our readers.