5 Ways You Can Introduce Independent Reading
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Everyone knows that knowledge is power and, in this day, and age, nearly everyone under the sun knows that you can read to improve your knowledge. There are a few initiatives to encourage students and children to read more yet many teachers and parents do not introduce anything at all. It is a growing problem that needs to change.
What is independent reading?
Independent reading is known in a few different terms. Extensive reading, voluntary reading, leisure reading and the list goes on. Although it is an instructional strategy by teachers and parents who provide dedicated time to students to read books of their choice. It works best when you are assigned a book to read at school and you have your own dedicated selection at home. Typically, it also has no questions or exercises associated with it until high school.
Why we love it
One of the best ways to get students to become more motivated and engaged in learning in general is to increase their literacy skills and give them time to read. However, we do not just stand back and watch them read. That is just an excuse waiting for them to stop reading completely. Instead, what I encourage parents is to utilise the school and local library, encourage them to read at home and introduce reading strategies to make the experience as easy as possible.
The research also supports this wherein 2015, a comprehensive study by Miller showed that students who read self-selected books benefited from higher comprehension, vocabulary, general knowledge and self-confidence as readers compared to those who did not. I also really like it as it is a really cost effective way to get a lot better with minimal costs. As someone who did not come from a very well off household when I was younger, I can attribute my knowledge to the wide variety of books that I read. Yes I owned a few books but the large majority of books I read was actually from the local library and I looked forward to borrowing new books every week. A habit that has helped me and countless students that I teach today to improve dramatically.
NSW Syllabus connections
According to the NSW syllabus, “students must read widely and deeply from among a broad range of high-quality, increasingly challenging literary and informational texts”. I am not surprised by this as the questions that are assessed even in primary and high school are from a wide variety and every subject including maths and visual arts even requires a degree of reading comprehension. Making it an important skill beyond just assisting with the English subject.
1. Book Selection
One of the mistakes parents make time and time again is that they limit the books for their children to read. They may have some books at home and they assume that their child will love all the books that are available. To a certain point, they will read the ones that interest them but some books just do not engage with them. Make sure to continually expose them to new books. Go to your local library once a week and they can choose books that are based on what they like. If you do not want to do that, you can segment the books you already have at home in terms of difficulty level from the beginning, intermediate and advanced. So that your child will know which one they want to read. If they are already struggling in intermediate, they know they shouldn’t even read any of the advanced books.
Our team also helps our students identify whether a book is too difficult or not. If you read the first few pages and there are many words that are too hard or you do not know the meaning of multiple words, then it is likely that the book is too advanced. If there are a few words that are familiar and only a small number of new words, then it is likely that it is a suitable difficulty. You do not want to have your children read books where they know the meaning of every word. They need to be challenged to a certain degree.
2. Check-ins
As teachers, we do routine check-ins with our students to make sure they are engaged with what they are assigned. Parents can also do this as well where you can have natural conversations with your child about the book. Don’t force it like ‘what are the top 5 things you like about the book you are reading?’ That is a bit overwhelming in terms of determining interest. Potentially something like – what is your favourite part so far? Which part is the most exciting?. Or better yet, if you have read the book as well, that would make it a good dialogue between the two of you.
3. Writing about the book they are reading
As part of our practical application of work, parents and teachers can ask students to write a response based on a creative novel they have read. If they read the Hunger Games for instance, how would they write a book interview with the author if they were tasked with that? How would the student create a newspaper article on the book and its success?
There are many ways you can assess their understanding of the book and try to make them apply it in different text types. It will allow them to think more critically about what they read as they must respond to it.
4. Showing Student Successes
We have our students here at Bing’s Academy to keep track of some of the books they have read. Not to see the number of books they read but as a celebration. Before, I used to get some students who were a bit weaker in their reading to go on Epic which allows students to read hundreds of free books. Although the books are easier in terms of difficulty, it is great in terms of increasing confidence in students who are still quite new to the process. It also tells me about the read time per book that the student spent and the number of books they have read. This is good information so that at the end of the year, I know how many books they have read throughout a set period which is amazing. I tell their parents and we both celebrate. Although I can also see how little time they have spent on books as well as they may just skim through it with an unnatural time and that is obviously not a good look but great feedback too.
5. Friends and peers
The last way we introduce independent reading for our students is by getting students from the same social group or school to also adopt this habit. It is so much easier when one student is encouraged to read every day and they also know that they are not the only ones who should be doing it. Instead, the people they hang around with and their friends who we also read to. From a parent perspective, you can get friends and neighbours who might be into it. Go to a library as a group. Have a set time after the park where your child and their friend goes to someone’s house and they read whatever book they want to.
We know that independent reading can be harder for children who speak another language at home but especially here in Australia, reading English books is an amazing way to be more literate. New research in 2017 shows that learning to read created strong and faster connections in the brain even in students who are late to reading. This means that students can adopt independent reading even in high school if they did not do it in primary and improve their ability to think.
Although an important point is that although independent reading is great, it is not a substitute for explicit reading comprehension and writing tasks. You should never tell a student to read a book instead of doing extra English homework. Instead think of it as an extra tool on top of what they are doing in class at school, with parents and with their tutor.
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