Students were taking notes on literary terms—specifically, conflict. I told them that the problem can be between people, like in the short story we had just read. “But what if there’s only one person in the story?” I asked. “Like Hatchet—who has read Hatchet?” A couple of hands went up, with a murmur of excitement. “In that book, a boy has to survive on his own in the Canadian wilderness.”
One student’s eyes grew big: “Woah! That sounds cool! Do you have that book?”Another student pointed to the bookshelf in the corner: “The green one down there.”
I retrieved it, deposited it on the desk of the student who received it eagerly, and returned to the person vs. nature conflict discussion. I’m excited that I’m becoming familiar enough with middle school books that I can make those connections, and I love having a classroom library on hand to get books in hands on the spot.
A different day, when the 10-minute timer went off, I announced, “Before you put your book away, I want you to look through it and see if you can find a sentence that doesn’t start with a capital letter.” (Since Japanese doesn’t have the equivalent of upper and lower case letters, it’s really hard for students to think they’re that big of a deal.) A few students—mostly the native English speakers—just stared at me like I was crazy. The rest of them started searching their books. Gradually it dawned on them. Maybe in their independent reading now they will have a little more of a writer’s eye for capital letters and their significance.
On yet another day, part way through our initial 10 minutes of independent reading, a 6th grader raised his hand. “Mrs. Essenburg,” he whispered, “I found two of our vocabulary words on this one page!” At the end of the 10 minutes, another 6th grader raised his hand and said, “I found two vocabulary words, too!” We are learning to pay attention to the powerful word choices that writers make, and along the was we realize how what’s on the quiz intersects with the larger world.
I’m only in my second year of devoting classroom time to independent reading, but I’m so pleased by the results. Students are reading, and instances of connection between the independent reading and classroom instruction turbo-charge learning. Sometimes those moments happen serendipitously, and sometimes I plan for them. I want to plan even more—which also tends to increase the rate of serendipity.
What do you do to connect independent reading with classroom instruction?
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