The Power Of Independent Practice Reading
A study of why students scored high on an international reading test taken by 32 countries was written up in the January, 2008 issue of The Journal of Adolescent and Adult Literacy. The authors were more interested in what was unique about the reading lives and habits of some students that enabled them to score high. What they discovered relates directly to independent practice reading. One indicator was the amount of leisure reading students did at home and in school. Another key indicator was the diversity and length of texts students reading. Those who scored the highest read long texts that included magazines, newspapers, fiction, and nonfiction; Those whose scores were solid but not as high as the group who read long texts read shorter texts that included magazines, comic, newspapers, fiction, and nonfiction.
The choices we teacher offer students, the diversity of texts in our classroom libraries, sharing these findings with students so they know the score and can make informed decisions about practice reading, and the amount of time students have for independent reading work together to build students
