In January 2016, my husband and I moved from Wake Forest, North Carolina to a small town in southwest Oklahoma. I transferred from teaching the fifth graders I had come to know and love to a rowdy group of second graders who had been without a teacher for three weeks before the Christmas break. Meanwhile, I was also enrolled in Teacher as Researcher and was presented with the task of defining a problem in my new classroom and working to identify ways to address that problem in my instruction. At first there seemed to be too many issues to choose just one. Then, after finding myself frustrated with our daily required "silent" reading time yet again, I knew that's what had to change. I began researching the most effective practices for independent reading, which I knew was so important thanks to Richard Allington's work that we had read in our Reading in the Elementary School course. I restructured my classroom to give my students a chance to discuss the books they were reading during our "silent" reading time. Based on interviews before and after this change, most of my students loved having the chance to talk with their peers, even if they were just talking about what they were reading. This is a practice I have continued in my classroom this year. My students love to share with each other information that they've learned or funny moments in books they are reading. They are always ready to give a book suggestion for our next in-class read aloud or for a peer looking for a new book to dive into. Our "silent" reading time is not so silent anymore!
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In a study on creating an environment in the classroom that is supportive of independent reading, Gambrell (1996) states that “social collaboration promotes achievement, high level cognition, and intrinsic desire to read” (p. 22). Reutzel and Juth (2014) also write that “discussion and social interaction around texts promotes development of higher-level literacy skills and increases students’ intrinsic motivation for reading and writing. Discussion and social interactions about text also increase students’ appreciation and understanding of text” (p. 34). Our students need the opportunity to reflect on their own reading and discuss what they have discovered with others because, as Hilden and Jones (2012) assert, “Literacy is an inherently social process” (p. 19). |
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