Silent Sustained Reading Program

Past Student Perspective:

I would have loved having a sustained silent reading program in middle and high school. From a student perspective, I can envision myself engrossed and engaged with my reading. Although this is a biased perspective, coming from a blossomed (avid reader). I understand though, that all students may not always embrace a sustained reading time, especially seedling readers (developing reader). Yet, it is our job as educators to help all students become as engrossed and engaged as an avid reader.

Educator Perspective:

From a teacher’s perspective, I agree with and feel eager to spread this concept of developing a successful sustained silent reading program for secondary students. I would hope that by establishing a successful reading time, as described by Lee and Bomer, that students would blossom as readers. Using this time to cultivate, water, and tend to seedling, budding, and already blossomed readers in my classroom. Watching as new books are recommended by others, and spread as bees pollinate flowers. I truly believe this would not be “wasted” or “lost instructional time” as many educators may feel. Rather it would be a deliberate and patient process for setting aside time to let students fall into the world of books. Reminding reluctant educators that just as a crop needs a season to harvest, such a program may need a season to be implemented with fruitful results. With an end goal of developing widely and deeply rooted readers.

References

Lee, A. (2001). Becoming the Reading Mentors Our Adolescents Deserve: Developing a Successful        Sustained Silent Reading Program. Journal of Adolescent and Adult Literacy, 55(3), 209-218.

Bomer, R. (2011). Buidling Adolescent Literacy in Today’s English Classroom. Portsmouth, NH:              Heinemann.

Reading History 

Memories reading, books we have read, characters we have met, and placed we have visited within the pages of books shape who we are. Here are the books and reading memories that have shaped my life.

Reading Timeline:

Infant years: Listening to board books with my parents like, I’m a Crazy Monster (I still have this book and I now read it to my daughter)

Toddler Years: Picture books such as What can I Dream About and Albert the Running Bear (my brother’s favorite picture book which is now in his son’s room)

Early elementary school: Bernstein Bears book collection (I once organized them by published date)

Elementary school: Ordering scholastic books from school and being ecstatic when they arrived. I especially loved the Bailey School Kids series.

Middle school: Walking to the library and spending hours searching for just the right book. This is when I feel that my reading roots spread out.  Watered with each book I pulled off the shelf. Burrowing deep and wide across genres and settling into the young adult section. Words from books as Pope Joan fed me as I blossomed into what I would consider an avid reader.

High school: I was the student with the book buried in my desk. Feeling the pull of the words when I wasn’t allowed to read. My book dog eared and ready for any moment I had free to read. What books define this period of my reading history? Any book that piqued my interested from the library. During this time I was also shaped by my English courses. Some novels I enjoyed such as the Scarlett Letter (where I first learned to annotate and analyze a text) and books I did not enjoy such as Heart of Darkness.

College: This era of my reading life shifted, as I had to learn how to read college textbooks. During this time, I sprouted new leaves as nonfiction became more and more of an integral part of my reading life.  With a few pleasure reads when time allowed during track and field trips or vacations. One including my trip to Colorado where I spent two days hunkered inside finally reading Gone with the Wind (My grandmother’s favorite novel given to me a few Christmases before).

Post College: Two words describe this blissful time in my reading. Pleasure reading. I was not required to read any specific book, expect of course the books I read to my 4^th and 5^th grade students as read alouds (all of which I loved and I hope the kids enjoyed hearing as well).  Authors such as Janet Evanovich and Sophie Kinsella made me laugh. While Clive Cussler, Francine Rivers, and Charliane Harris filled my days with adventure, grace, and fantasy.

Graduate school/Current day: The tides of my reading turned back once again pulling my attention toward nonfiction reading. My reading including mostly professional development books for work, graduate articles and texts, and parenting and pregnancy books or blogs.  As always in my reading past, trying to squeeze in a few choice books while snuggled up with my daughter. While reading my own books I can’t help but stop and look at her and hope that she has her own rich reading future in the making; shaped by the words she is listening to even now and by the words she is yet to read.

Being a Kid is Tough...

I'm reading Wonder right now and throughout the book I am reminded what it was like to be a middle school student. It was tough.

As teachers I think we can help guide our students throughout their day by stepping back into our childhood memories and reminiscing what it was like to be a kid.

As was the case today with one of my "toughest" 5th grade students. His morning started off by him punching the desks in my room and yelling threats because of a crying student who didn't let him sleep on the bus. Which ended with us printing pictures of Tom Brady to post in his classroom, and agreeing that if Tom Brady can turn around the game and win, he can turn his day around too.  Flash forward to the middle of the day, the bus incident long past, with the same "tough" student walking into my room covering the front of his hair. He sheepishly asks if I  have a mirror and I open my cabinet to reveal one. He walks over explaining that he put too much gel in his hair this morning. After a quick release of his hand I see the globs of white, dried gel in his blonde hair. He is delicately picking at it, but the gel is stuck firmly to his hair. After failed attempts to pull out the gel, being unable to locate a comb, and a few jokes from my paraprofessional about styling his hair for him, we decide that the best solution is for him to go to the restroom and wash his hair in the sink. It must of worked because he went right back to class after the restroom. The gel crisis resolved.

Being a kid is tough...and I mean that with all sincerity.

Therefore, I challenge you to dig back into those often blotted out and tough middle school memories when you are helping your students navigate their day. Never forgetting the crankiness from lack of sleep on Monday mornings, our eagerness to fit in, or the embarrassment that a little bit of dried gel can cause.