Mandie Allen's Blog Post 1: Miller Section 1 (August)

In Section 1 of No More Independent Reading Without Support, Miller stresses the importance of quality independent reading time for students.  She states that independent reading time is important for students' growth as readers and while great teachers give wonderful reading instruction, students spend very little time actually reading in classrooms.  Furthermore, when students are reading independently, they receive very little feedback from teachers about what they are reading.  In many schools, classrooms have adopted a time period where everyone (including the teacher) is quietly reading to themselves.  With this form of silent reading there is no guarantee that students are reading or comprehending what they read.

After reading this section, I was reminded of our Common Core training with Dr. Cox.  She emphasized the importance of independent reading and the remarkable impact it would make on our students.  Last year, I had a strong group of readers so I put a lot of focus on them picking out books, reading them, and taking an AR test.  Students were so excited to see their AR flower "grow" each time they earned points for passing a test.  Even my lowest readers gained confidence from each passed test.  At the end of the year, the STAR test showed tons of growth for almost all of my students (even students who scored high to begin with).

Seeing how effective independent reading was has motivated me to continue with this year's group.  I would also like to be better about conferencing with my students as they are reading during their independent time.  One challenge I face with this is having low readers.  Since my students are in first grade, if they are low readers then often there are a limited number of books that are on their level.