Finding 2: Specific systems regarding time, choice, community, and structure can be put in place to implement a strong independent reading program.
"The Beginning"
While I loved what I was learning my Reading in the Content Areas class, one skepticism I kept coming back to while reading Vacca et al's book was how guided every reading experience that they were suggesting seemed to be. I kept wondering how I can teach students to use strategies and skills but also get them to use these strategies independently. Further, reading is such a passion and a hobby of mine, and I wanted to instill this love for reading in my students. However, I had never learned anything in any of my education classes about how to create a robust independent reading program in a classroom that gets kids enjoying and reading and reading a lot.
When I was asked to conduct research and write a position paper on an educational topic that interested me at the end of my Reading in the Content Areas class, I knew exactly what I needed to research and learn more about:
While I loved what I was learning my Reading in the Content Areas class, one skepticism I kept coming back to while reading Vacca et al's book was how guided every reading experience that they were suggesting seemed to be. I kept wondering how I can teach students to use strategies and skills but also get them to use these strategies independently. Further, reading is such a passion and a hobby of mine, and I wanted to instill this love for reading in my students. However, I had never learned anything in any of my education classes about how to create a robust independent reading program in a classroom that gets kids enjoying and reading and reading a lot.
When I was asked to conduct research and write a position paper on an educational topic that interested me at the end of my Reading in the Content Areas class, I knew exactly what I needed to research and learn more about:
"Gaining Traction"
Fortunately, after I had planted this seed of interest in independent reading programs, I was able to enroll in ECI 521: "Teaching Literature for Young Adults." In this class I learned so many valuable lessons, but the most important one was that with the right choice of texts, reading can be extremely enjoyable for early adolescent students. Every week, I walked away with more exciting texts to add to my list of young adult books to read, and pretty quickly I became a YAL fanatic. I learned that there are several techniques I can put in place to get students excited about young adult literature:
- Maintain a large and diverse classroom library
- Read often and stay up to date on new books so that I can recommend them to my students
- Hold "book talks" and "book commercials" where students can come in front of the class to rave about books they love
- Give students choice in what they read, so that they can read texts that are enjoyable to them, not just what their teachers require.
In this class, I learned about book trailers, a great way to pique students' interest in a particular book. My colleague Hongjuan and I created the following book trailer for Karen Hesse's book of poems, Out of the Dust:
"Hitting My Stride"
During my ECI 523: Teacher as Researcher class in Fall 2014, I focused my entire coursework -- a teacher action research study-- on the independent reading program I had put in place in my classroom, called the 40-Book Challenge. The question I aimed to answer was how I could engage students in reading a variety of diverse genres of fiction and nonfiction texts, but also keep their sense of choice in what they read intact?
I am continuing to explore this question throughout this year, but my teacher action research project was transformative in helping me not only to create choice for my students and engage them in their independent reading, but also to help my own growth in taking risks in my classroom and analyzing the results. I am still on this exciting journey of helping my students to love reading independently.