Emily Hammett-Post 1- Section One NOT THIS by Debbie Miller

"Is there enough time? And is time enough to support independent reading?" Miller starts section one with asking these questions and throughout the past week I have asked myself the same questions. I have started to feel like a robot in the classroom or like I am play teaching. Some days I feel as if nothing is getting accomplished in reading. I am hoping this is just first year teacher worries and that these things aren't really happening in my classroom.

Sadly, my kids are not getting the independent reading time that they desperately need, but I continuously run out of time. I feel confident in my reading groups, which is where my students spend their reading time. We start out with a 10 minute mini-lesson (which I feel is already rushed), then we move on to our reading groups for 30 minutes, and then summarize with a 5 minute discussion. I want all of my students to improve tremendously in reading, but what can I cut throughout the day to have more time?

After reading this chapter, I have decided for 3 days a week my students will miss their mini-lessons and a chunk of reading groups to have silent reading without instruction. Today I told them that we would have more time for reading our own library books and they were so excited. I began to feel saddened that I had taken interest reading away from them. How can one love to read if they do not love what they are reading? After telling them the awesome news of choice reading during reading time, we created a Padlet where they told me how I could know that they were actually reading. It was interesting to see the things that they thought could prove that they were reading. Some of the comments that I loved the most were: not flipping pages, our eyes will follow the words, and not looking around the room. We discussed that we will call this time where we get to read our own library books, Super Readers time. I hope that this will help create better readers and give me more time to conference with students.

While reading I highlighted the short story by Eduardo Galleano. I thought it was so interesting that for so many years people just did what they were told without questioning. I don't ever want my students to continue to do things without knowing the importance of what they are doing. As humans we are creatures of habit. If the people before us did the same thing every day then we think we need to do that too, but honestly the people who think out of the box or question are the ones who think the deepest.

Now that I have read this section I feel more energized and empowered to make choice reading a priority.