Cultivating a Culture of Reading in Every Class as the Year Begins

This year will go down in my personal history as the year of my foray into elementary. Also of my year of implementing independent reading in all my classes. I have survived the first week of this historic year, and more than surviving, I'm pretty excited. I started last year implementing independent reading (with significant class time invested) in grades 6 and 7 English language arts (ELA). This year, I'm expanding it into grades 4 and 5 ELA and middle school advanced English as a foreign language (EFL). 

One benefit of starting independent reading on the second day of school (at least for the ELA classes): Because there’s little homework yet, some students had nothing else to do in study hall but read! A student asked me at the end of that second class what he was supposed to do with the book he’d been reading—give it back to me, put it in his locker, or take it home. I told him though he didn’t have to read again until the first 10 minutes of class the following day, it was always good to read (for all the reasons we’d just talked about). So it would be a really smart thing to take it with him and read any time he had time. The next day he came to class with a handful of pages left in the book. Many of the students in grades 6/7 as I looked around on Friday morning had clearly been reading more than just the 30 minutes of class time we’d had so far. In grades 4/5, when I came into the room Wednesday, many students were excitedly telling me how many minutes more than the required amount they’d read the previous night. 

Here's how I introduced it: I started not with the “you have to,” but with the vision of why. And I started curious and invitational—what did they already know about reasons for reading? Students brainstormed in their notebook all the reasons they could think of for reading. Then they shared with a partner and added new items to their list. Then I compiled all the students’ reasons on the whiteboard. Finally, I used 2 infographics to compare with our list and add any reasons no one had thought of yet. (Infographics from Kelly Gallagher’s work and from Kylene Beers and Robert E. Probst’s book Disrupting Thinking: Why How We Read Matters) 

I was very pleasantly surprised at how many reasons students came up with on their own. (I really wish I’d remembered to take a picture of the whiteboard at the end of one of those classes!) When I put up an infographic, the students were excited when it corroborated an answer they’d already come up with, and excited when a new answer emerged. I followed up with different activities for different classes—circle the three reasons that are most important to you right now, or tell a partner about a book you’ve read recently and which of these benefits you got from it. Then I posted the infographics permanently in the classroom. (See below for content.)

One benefit of designating the first 10 minutes of the period as independent reading: Students enter the room and begin to read, even before the class officially begins! 

Elementary is a little different. Though we are in person, we have a shortened schedule due to Covid-19 measures, so I have 35 minutes a day, and writing to do as well. But students were already accustomed to a required 10 minutes per day, 6 days a week (or 60 minutes per week) of required reading at home. I’m keeping that, and planning to also devote Fridays to all things reading (after the spelling test). 

Doing independent reading with EFL is also new for me, but it’s backed by research and authority. Stephen Krashen cites the research that independent reading supports second language learning (Free Voluntary Reading), and Larry Ferlazzo affirms that and gives strategies, resources, and examples from his practice (The ELL Teacher’s Tool Box and The ESL/ELL Teacher’s Survival Guide). So I decided to take the plunge. A couple of students were already reading their own English books independently. For the rest, I provided quality English books at lower reading levels (“If you haven’t already read Charlotte’s Web, it’s a good book, and many native English speakers will have read it”), leveled books adapted for ESL (I was so excited to discover a cache of these at school, including one of my childhood favorites, Rosemary Sutcliffe’s The Eagle of the Ninth, which one student took, and a Bill Gates biography, which another student snatched up), and a variety of articles from Newsela that are current and relevant (for example, the Myanmar coup 2 months on and how people use online gaming to learn English). 

And so the experiment begins. It was a good first week. I’m sure excitement will wane, and I’m encouraged at the level of engagement so far. We still have to set goals and learn about reading strategies, and I’m really interested in seeing how it all develops.

 

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Note on infographic content:

• Beers and Probst infographic reasons for reading: Build knowledge, improve achievement, increase motivation, increase vocabulary, improve writing, build background knowledge, improve understanding of text structures, develop empathy, develop personal identity
• Gallagher infographic reasons for reading: Rewarding, builds mature vocabulary, makes you a better writer, is hard and “hard” is necessary, makes you smarter, prepares you for the world of work, financially rewarding, opens the door to college and beyond, arms you against oppression