High Expectations for All During Independent Reading

It's that time of year: the sun is shining and minds are wandering as we grow tired of winter and look forward to spring time!  Despite the weather changing, we still have several months of learning yet this school year.  I have recently been reminded of how critical it is to have high expectations always, even during independent reading.  In fact, I'd go as far as to say that it isn't just critical, if we want to provide an equitable learning environment for our students, we must have high expectations. Jennifer Serravallo has some helpful ideas for us as to how we can support our students with the skills associated with staying engaged in text.

After hearing from several teachers that students are just not engaged in text during their independent reading lately, I was concerned about the amount of time that those students might be disengaged during the day.  Math problems started running through my head, like if a student has 40 minutes per day of independent time, and there are about 50 days left of school, that's 2,000 minutes of independent reading left in the school year.  That coupled with my recent reading of chapter 12 from Glenn Singleton's book Courageous Conversations About Race, where he discusses his vision for equity, and states, "Above all else, they are expected to reach high and supported to succeed often." (page 235)  We must continue to have high expectations for our students.  During independent reading, that means we must expect that they are engaged in text.

However, high expectations without support are difficult to sustain.  I immediately turned to Jennifer Serravallo's The Reading Strategies Book.  (I often refer to it as the "target book" because of the picture on the cover.)  There is an entire section devoted to the goal of "Teaching Reading Engagement."  We teach children how to decode, summarize, read fluently, analyze text...but we must also explicitly teach them to engage with text.  Serravallo starts off the section by suggesting we begin with an engagement survey (kidwatching tool).  Then based on what is observed, she has several strategies she suggests in the chapter.  I'm going to highlight a few of my favorites (although I highly recommend you go straight to the source):

• Use reading logs (page 46) to provide you and your students with all kinds of information that can later be analyzed and helps provide accountability and something concrete to discuss in a conference.  (I'd leave off the "level" though.)  Reading Log Rate Reflection (p. 65) helps kids to analyze their stamina and what and how much they are reading.
• Break Reads (page 49) can be used when students love a certain type of book (like Guinness Book of World Records) and you are encouraging them to read another genre.  
• Retell and Jump Back In (page 52) is helpful for students who find their minds tend to wander when reading.
• Set a Timed Goal (page 55) and Party Ladder (page 57) encourage students to set goals and work towards them.

There are a host of other ideas in the section to explore as well.  Alright, so now there are ideas to support these high expectations, but you might be wondering just when you will get this done when we have been working diligently at providing consistent guided group instruction for our students this year.  Your literacy coach would be more than happy to connect with you to brainstorm how and when this might look in your classroom to teach these engagement strategies to those students who need support to reach our high expectations.  Imagine all that our students can learn and gain with 2,000 minutes of engaged time in text over the next few months!