This week we have been practicing the skills that are required for students to gain the most from our “read to self” and “read to someone” times. We have created criteria for what success looks like during these times.
The reason it is so important that we get this routine down is so students can effectively use their time to develop their literacy skills and so that the teacher has time to work one-on-one conferencing with different students. In his article, Every Child, Every Day, Richard Allington tells us that “The research base on student-selected reading is robust and conclusive: Students read more, understand more, and are more likely to continue reading when they have the opportunity to choose what they read. In a 2004 meta-analysis, Guthrie and Humenick found that the two most powerful instructional design factors for improving reading motivation and comprehension were (1) student access to many books and (2) personal choice of what to read.”
Allington and Gabriel also speak to the importance of Read-to-Someone by stating, “Research has demonstrated that conversation with peers improves comprehension and engagement with texts in a variety of settings (Cazden, 1988). Such literary conversation does not focus on recalling or retelling what students read. Rather, it asks students to analyze, comment, and compare—in short, to think about what they’ve read. Fall, Webb, and Chudowsky (2000) found better outcomes when kids simply talked with a peer about what they read than when they spent the same amount of class time highlighting important information after reading.”
Check out these awesome readers following our criteria!
