Christina Duvall, December Blog: Routman Chapter 6, Plan for and Monitor Independent Reading

This chapter was a great reminder of the value of independent reading. The biggest take away for me is the fact that if you want any child to improve in reading, allow for more independent reading opportunities. Routman maintains that her reading program was not simply a "take your book out and read" program, but that it involved more aspects such as keeping students accountable for using decoding strategies used in class and setting goals to further improve reading. It was key for me to read this. I tend to do too much multi-tasking during our morning independent reading time (such as assisting certain students who may have make-up work to complete, welcoming and situating a latecomer, briefly checking over spelling homework) on top of trying to observe and informally conference with students. So the quality of my assessing and helping students suffers.I want to make a better effort to devote that independent reading time to working indirectly (monitoring and listening) and directly (checking for comprehension, decoding assistance) with my students.

I also agree with what Routman says about fluency: "Fluency involves much more than smooth reading." This is something that I often overlook myself. She gives the example of bringing in a difficult textbook or manual to read aloud fluently to the class, allowing them to see that even though you can read words well, you can barely make meaning from the text. I have one student this year who struggles with comprehension. Her word calling fluency is usually very accurate, but her comprehension fluency is weak, even with pictures to support the text. She needs repeated vocabulary, question rephrasing, and constant re-reading of text to assist with this. So when envisioning myself reading a manual like the above example suggests, it allowed me to better understand how this student struggles and how to keep helping her.  I also like the idea of congratulating a student for acknowledging that a book is too difficult because it is not understood. More often in first grade I will get "this book is too hard for me, I can't read the words," (and often this could be for various reasons like a student who picked a book due to its appealing cover rather than checking for "just right" words, the book was based off a popular theme or movie, etc.)  but it does take some higher level awareness for students to admit when they can't understand a book.