Twenty minutes of my son's third-grade reading time is spent having the students read silently. Even the teacher reads during this time. Wouldn't some instruction from the teacher during this time be a more appropriate way to improve his reading? - Unhappy
What you have described is called Sustained Silent Reading (SSR). Teachers use it because they want their students to have daily practice in reading and to motivate them to read.
You are right about your son needing some input from the teacher. Much of the criticism of the effectiveness of SSR is the lack of teacher-student interaction. SSR works best when teachers make an effort to ensure that students are reading books that they can handle independently. Students also need to read a wide variety of books. Teachers should talk with students individually about what they are reading during the time allotted for silent reading. Plus, it's important that they listen to the students read passages and give them feedback on their reading skills. When teachers interact with the students, the students are far more likely to make better use of this silent-reading time.
I am a certified 7-12th grade English teacher with a Masters in English. You both have many more degrees and much more experience than I do, but everything I've read about SSR (most recently: Kylene Beers' _When Kids Can't Read: What Teachers Can Do_ and Martha Rapp Ruddell's _Teaching Content Reading & Writing_) states that it is an important piece of a child's school-day experience.
Beers notes that teachers should at first, and then intermittently, read with the students for the sake of modeling. However, Beers seems to agree with you that there are more productive ways for the teacher to be using SSR time, most of the time. Most of those ways involve meeting individually with students, as you mention.
It sounds like you and Beers might be in agreement about the benefits of SSR, so long as the teacher is usually using that time to confer with students individually--meaning each student might get time with the teacher once a week. However, your reply here made it sound like you do NOT think SSR is a useful instructional strategy, and I am concerned that parents will read it and go to their schools and use your response as an argument to abolish SSR.
Can you clarify this point to your readership?
Thank you very much!
Sincerely,
Holly Stephens, Silver Spring, MD
Post new comment