Monitoring Independent Reading

I have always wondered how you can hold students accountable for the reading they are doing during sustained silent reading time in the classroom. When observing students during silent reading I always notice a handful of students that are always staring at the wall. I remember being one of these students when I was in elementary school. I was always distracted by other people in the classroom and never used the assigned reading time wisely.

I observed a wonderful program in my dyad placement this year called R.A.H. R.A.H. stands for Read At Home. The students were required to read a certain amount of pages per quarter and journal about what they were reading. Every Monday the students were to sign in their journals and be ready to conference with a parent volunteer. The parent volunteers were there to meet with the students and insure that they were comprehending the book being read. This was a time for the students to recap what the book was about and the parents to help the students think deeper into what they were reading by asking questions. Although RAH was meant for at-home reading I see it being a useful tool in the classroom too.

Routman has a great idea of keeping a reading record of what books she has read. I think combining the reading record idea with the R.A.H journals would be a way of holding the students accountable to actually reading during SSR. At the end of silent reading, having the students draw or write in their journal about what they just read would keep them on task and would be an easy way for the teacher to assess and evaluate the students reading progress.