Sami Singleton Blog Post 1= Miller (2013), Not This: Is There Enough Time? And Is Time Enough to Support Independent Reading?

As a resource teacher this chapter does not really apply to me. I have to teach certain programs for the short 50 minutes I have my students. However, I taught a self-contained class 3 years ago and it does apply to that type of classroom setting. At this school we had a program called 100 book challenge. The students have to read 30 minutes every day and write down 2 books they read. Other teachers used this time to grade papers or catch up on lesson plans. I had Kindergarteners through 5^th grade with all different kinds of disabilities. I had students on all levels of learning so teaching things as a whole class was not an option. I worked 100 book challenge into a station of reading. During this time I did a reading group using the LLI program and my assistant also did a reading group using the LLI program. Another group was either working on reading comprehension passages or studying/ completing work if they were taking the regular education Social Studies class. The fourth group consisted of students reading the leveled books in the 100 book challenge bins. I quickly found that many of my students were “fake” reading. I then made the students in 3^nd-5^th grade write about each book they read. They had to use complete sentences and try to spell things correctly. I changed what they were writing about weekly and it usually went along with a specific state standard. This way I could tell that they had read the book but it also worked on their writing.

The one thing that I did not do with their independent reading time is conference with my students.  One reason for this was because my assistant and I were both running our own LLI groups at the time so we would not have been able to conference during that time. Honestly, I am not sure how I would have found the time to conference with each student every day. Maybe I could have conference with one or two students during their morning work time. They could have missed morning work that day and followed along with other students when we went over it later.  However, that means they would be conferencing with me about books they had read the day before. My students often had a very short memory and I am not sure the conferences would have been beneficial if we had them a day later at a time where they were not currently reading. At the end of the day we had our writing time while my assistant was working with the kindergarteners. During this time I held a conference with each kid on their writing so this is a time I would not have wanted to miss. It was also mandated by the school because writing was our focus for the year.  I am not sure where I would have found the time to conference with my students on reading.

I like the idea of having reading conferences because I saw the importance of the writing conferences I did with my students. It really helps you see the individual strengths and weaknesses of each child. It also gives the student an input on their own learning. I think that it would be great if all regular classrooms could implement time in the day for reading conferences.