4 Classroom Routines & Rituals to Encourage Independent Reading
The new calendar year provides an opportunity for teachers to do a mini-re-launch, similar to the beginning of the school year.
This is a time of transition after an extended period away from the classroom, and transitions can make or break our mindset. They deserve priority when we think about how we can honor everyone involved in the process and ensure we foster a community that values one another and all that we have to offer.
Not to mention, teaching during a global pandemic and the consistency of inconsistencies, means we need to be prepared.
Let’s think together of micro-actions that will set us up for success.
Students will need a refresh of classroom routines and rituals to help ease them back into learning. We should anticipate a slower start while still ready to re-acquaint students with simple habits that nurture independent readers.
Independent readers are engaged readers, so the key here is to make these routines and rituals student-centered and keep them involved in the process.
First, a refresh on independent reading: what is it, and why is it important?
According to the NCTE Statement on Independent Reading:
“Independent reading is a routine, protected instructional practice that occurs across all grade levels. Effective independent reading practices include time for students to read, access to books that represent a wide range of characters and experiences, and support within a reading community that includes teachers and students. Student choice in text is essential because it motivates, engages, and reaches a wide variety of readers. The goal of independent reading as an instructional practice is to build habitual readers with conscious reading identities.”
Nerd out on this independent reading stuff? Take a deeper dive with our white paper.
Just a few reasons why independent reading is valuable is that it helps students understand diverse genres, expands their imagination, and keeps them engaged through developing agency.
Here are 4 simple ways to help you keep organized, adapted from the Teachers Toolkit for Independent Reading, written by me and my bestie, Gravity Goldberg.
Ready to start reviewing your classroom routines and rituals for independent reading? Let’s dive in!
Revisit and reflect upon reading goals
Earlier this month, we talked about goal setting and steps you can take to set yourself up with intentional and strategic goals for the year.
Be sure to model this process with students, too! If you already set some up at the beginning of the school year, now is the time to review and reflect.
Reinforce that sticking with a process counts as much as (if not more than) achieving the goal. So make sure you’re consistently reviewing and reflecting to ensure you’re on the right track.
If you didn't set up reading goals, start now. The most important thing for students to establish when creating a goal is understanding their why.
Having a purpose for a goal means you’re more likely to meet it, helps establish autonomy, and makes the goal meaningful.
One place you can start is by using a Reading Identity Survey to get students thinking and putting pen to paper about their conscious reading patterns before they start building out some goals. Get our Reading Identity Survey we created here.
You might give this (or your own version) to students to answer at home when they need a break from reading, or you could use these questions in more of an interview-style conversation in your initial “getting to know you (again)” reading conferences.
Some questions to get them thinking about goals are:
What’s been going well for you in your reading?
What’s been a challenge in your reading?
Look at an entry from their reading notebook and discuss thinking. A question could be
What kinds of thinking have you been doing in your book?
From there, identify a few potential goals and start creating an action plan together. (Again, you can follow this step-by-step process as a guide!)
Refresh your classroom browse bins
Choice matters when it comes to fostering independent readers! When readers get to choose what they want to read and what they can read, they will read!
One tool I’ve talked about before to provide students with choice and promote independent reading is a “browse bin”.
The concept of a browse bin is to create mini-libraries throughout the classroom filled with texts that students can choose from. Browse bins will also help you get reacquainted with the readers in your classroom and learn what type of texts they enjoy.
They also ensure that any student can find a text that resonates with them so be sure to include a variety of texts regarding content, length, and format.
Get creative! Aside from books, some other examples of texts you can include are recipes, magazines, catalogs, “look books” (Where’s Waldo, for example), maps, and instruction pamphlets.
Check in periodically to ensure the browse bins meet the students' affinities. Once you’ve reestablished who students are as readers, you can refresh the browse bin to reflect that, and eventually, the shelves in your classroom library.
Check out this short video for more ideas on browse bins.
Ease back into reading routines through reading aloud short texts
Kick off your read-aloud time by modeling reading routines with short, high-interest, lower-level texts that aren’t difficult or frustrating to read, but still engage the entire community with complex thinking.
Keep in mind that independent reading doesn’t necessarily need to be written text; it could be listening or watching, too! Try listening to 2-3 minutes of a kid-friendly podcast (like Big Life Journal), watch a short film (like Hair Love), or listen to the lyrics of a song.
Chances are, if students have a shared experience of pushing their comprehension through a variety of short, and engaging texts, they’ll take these same thinking patterns and push their thinking in the books they select independently. It’s a win-win. The classroom gathers once again as a community around shared texts, and students are invited to push their thinking in their independent reading too. Reading aloud invites students to practice their thinking together as a community, and then borrow those same thinking strategies in their own reading. Stay tuned for more on reading aloud in an upcoming series.
Encourage daily conversations through partnerships that create community
“When we read together, we connect. Together, we see the world. Together, we see one another.” ~ Kate DiCamillo
As much as we want to create independent readers in the sense that we want to help students build autonomy and purpose in their reading habits, reading should equally be viewed as a social activity.
Without peer support or conversation, the development of thinking skills can be stunted. Students might end up ‘fake reading’ (i.e. not absorbing the content of the text or contemplating it) due to a lack of dialogue about what they learned or discovered in their reading. Without choice, not only what type of book to read, but also a choice in what to think about and discuss with others - we’re running the risk of setting up a system that takes the zip right out of reading. It’s what Kelly Gallagher speaks to in his book Readicide.
Instead - let’s think through how bringing choice to students increases engagement and joy. Collaborative conversations are a structure that we recommend prioritizing time for in your daily schedule. Through daily partnership conversations, students become ‘lead learners’ as they speak and rehearse and model how they listen.
Interested in learning more? Stay tuned - we’ve got a deeper dive into collaborative classroom conversations headed your way VERY soon!
Giving students time to talk with a thinking partner about their reading choices allows them to discover their identity as a person and as a reader while also forming a classroom community.
Include time each day following independent reading time (or math, or science, or recess…really ANY part of the day) for students to connect with their peers and become each other’s thinking partners; this will build their confidence and set them up to lead book clubs in the spring!
Wrapping It Up
To recap, here are the 4 simple steps you can take to create classroom routines and rituals to encourage independent reading in the new year:
Review your personal and professional reading goals from the beginning of the year, and provide time for students to check in on their goal-setting work from the fall. Check in, or create some if you haven’t done so already. Reflect consistently, and reinforce the value of the process versus the result.
Commit to 20 minutes a day of independent reading; use browse bins with a range of texts to nurture reader identities.
Model comprehension strategies through daily read-aloud sessions of short texts followed by classroom discussion.
Include time for daily partnership conversations so that students can discuss their reading and ideas with peers.
Let’s develop readers who can read, and also love to read, and set them up for success to finish out the school year strong!
