This page is a collection of resources to help teachers manage a few of the challenges of reading deeply and widely with students.
As we’ve talked about in the academy, sustained silent reading should be an integral part of school’s culture. Here is one school’s sustained silent reading plan: 2013 Logan High Sustained Silent Reading Plan Not every teacher in the school was a willing participant in the SSR plan, although many began to see the usefulness of it.
One concern of other content area teachers was “how to know” if students had really read. The simplest way is to talk with students about their reading, creating a culture where teachers and students share their reading adventures.
But for those who need a bit more hand’s on kind of management tools, to combat the fear that student’s reading time will be wasted, here are some short, Sustained Silent Reading one page reflections that can be utilized. We want to emphasize that these ARE NOT representative of text dependent questions. These reflections simply ask students to share a bit about what they read during that day’s SSR time. A classroom teacher could use these reflections to justify daily participation points for the SSR time.
Another thing that challenges teachers is helping guide students to books that will suit them. If we can get a child excited about ONE BOOK they will find another in their lives. Here’s a tool that might be employed to help get to know our students a bit better, and help up guide them to “their” book: reading_interest_survey
Some Projects and Assessments Shared by Tracy Baisden
Informational Text Resources
Article: How Annotation Reshapes Student Learning is a defense for close reading and annotation.