According  to research here  are the  outlined practices common to effective junior-class reading teachers:

• The teachers’ main aim was “to develop a lasting interest in reading” – skills were seen as subsidiary to interest.
• They were enthusiastic readers themselves.
• High achievement came as a result of greater reading mileage.
• Their classrooms offered attractive reading environments with abundant reading resources.
• The basic formula: interest created effort which generated greater achievement.
• Teachers read aloud every day.
• Some of the teachers had Reading Recovery training.

When it comes to young adults and reading, teacher Chris Crowe (1999) focuses on the reading preferences and attitudes of his own teenage children. Written as a plea to his children’s teachers, his advice has stood the test of time:

• Help them realise that reading books can be a refreshing and rewarding alternative to TV, movies, shopping, or hanging out with friends.
• Help them discover, or remember, the pleasures of reading.
• Allow them to exercise Daniel Pennac’s “Reader’s Bill of Rights” whenever possible.
• Require and encourage outside, elective reading, and steer them toward good Young Adult books.
• Help them connect with what they read, and nudge them to works related to what they’ve just read, or, if they’re in a reading rut, nudge them into something different.
• Read yourself and talk to your children and their classmates about what you read.
• Read some of what they read.
• Read aloud in class, and give them time to read in class.

Free Voluntary Reading

Teachers making time for independent, free-choice reading is a powerful way to create readers. Key features of “free voluntary reading” are:

• provide access to the sort of material that will engage student readers in the classroom, from the library, and during out-of-school time
• allow “easy reading” which is engaging, enjoyable and effortless. Avoid the idea that “if it isn’t challenging it isn’t good for you”. Ideally 95 percent of text as known words is optimal. Increased reading volume will compensate for lack of extension in individual texts, and readers tastes do gradually develop and broaden.

Provide access to a variety of reading material

If book exposure is high, students have greater opportunities to start reading.

• Is there a bountiful, well-displayed accessible classroom library?
• Do you request books from National Library Curriculum Services each term for additional classroom resources?
• How often and how well do you use the school library with your students?
• Is there a wide range of resources to read – fiction, comics and magazines, graphic novels, sophisticated picture books, non-fiction, poetry?
• Explore the potential of e-books

Make time for independent reading every day

Reading volume plays a key role in shaping the mind and is a powerful predictor of vocabulary, comprehension, general knowledge and cognitive structures.

Make time each day for students to read, and encourage students to read at other available moments during the day. These opportunities might include during Sustained Silent Reading (SSR), while eating lunch, when they have finished class work early, at various waiting times during the day, on the bus…

Sometimes setting an individual or class challenge encourages reading mileage and illustrates how small amounts of reading, eg 3 x 6 minutes per day, can add up over a year to a large amount of reading mileage.

Variation in Amount of Independent Reading (Adapted from Anderson, Wilson, and Fielding)

Independent reading

Minutes per day; Words read per year

65.0	4,358,000
21.1	1,823,000
14.2	1,146,000
6.5	432,000
1.3	106,000

Give students free choice about what they read

Talk to students about how we read and our right to read in different ways, including the right not to finish a book.

Book chat

Reading is not just a solitary activity. In fact the social aspect of reading such as discussion with peers can be a powerful motivator. Encourage informal discussions about reading and books ensuring students can express opinions freely and safely.

Ideas for discussions include:

• Encourage book talk in the class. Encourage students to share verbally aspects of the book they have been reading, such as setting, time, characters, plot, ideas and themes. Aidan ChambersTell me: children, reading, and talk offers practical suggestion for encouraging book talk.
• Prompt a brainstorm and discussion with students with a list of questions. What stood out for you? What puzzled you? What reminded you of something else you’d read? What did you like or dislike about the book? How did you feel when you were reading this section or this book? Try getting them to share this with a partner, rather than report back to the whole group.
• Set up a book club (or get the students, in particular teens to set one up)- these are great for encouraging students to talk informally to each other about books they’ve read.

 

 

 

Help students understand what they read

Engaging students with what they read is one of the most effective ways of helping students think about and make sense of what they read.

 

 

References :Effective Literacy Practice in Years 1 to 4 (2003)  Effective Literacy Practice in Years 5 to 8 (2006)

 

By: DELSAN D. LOPEZ | TEACHER III | LUZ ELEMENTARY SCHOOL | LIMAY,BATAAN