At one of our recent professional development sessions, Mr. Murray presented staff with the research and strategies presented by Debbie Miller, in her book No More Independent Reading Without Support.  In her book, she stresses the need, especially now, for children to have structured time with eyes on text (reading).  In many classrooms, reading instruction looks like silent reading – providing students with the time for them to read.  The basic premise of her book is that struggling readers should not be left alone to learn how to read.  Taking time to conference with students, ask them about what they are reading, checking for fluency, word attack strategies, comprehension etc. is vitally important. In addition, children need to have the opportunity to select their own books, from various genres and learn how to select an appropriate book.

Our plans are:

1. To teach students about reading genres
2. To improve the variety of books in our class libraries - most of the books in our class libraries are fiction.
3. To help students learn how to pick an appropriate book.
4. To spend time during silent reading to conference with all the students in our classes to determine how they are doing and to assist with things they are struggling with. Based on any widespread trends, we will target / teach / review with all students strategies for building student understanding / proficiency.

This helps support our literacy focus by helping to put more appropriate books and a wider variety of books into the hands of our students.  In addition, it provides teachers with student specific information on what reading skills each one needs help with.