Gallagher focuses a lot on the need for independent reading in their instructional classes. I completely agree with this! Students should be given the opportunities to read independently in order to become life-long readers. Without the opportunity for independent and a multiple range of readings students will not connect to reading in any way whatsoever.
The school that I just finished my first practicum at was very good at this through their RC program. I was given the privilege of working with two host teachers and was able to compare their two different teaching styles. One teacher taught 7th grade and kept reading logs on her students and their only requirement of their RC reading was to read 50 pages a week for her higher level classes and 30 pages for her lower level classes. The other teacher taught 8th grade and didn't keep up with reading logs at all, and her only requirement of their RC aspect of the class was that they met their goals that were agreed upon between her and the student. The seventh grade teachers also allowed her students 10 minutes every single day to read a book of their choice. The eighth grade teacher did not give them a set time every single day, but would give them more time (like 20-30 minutes) during class once or twice a week.
Although I hope to teach on a high school level and the implementation of a program such as RC is not something that will likely be used in this setting, I will use the idea of SSR in my classroom. I think that allowing students the opportunity to read for their own pleasure and through their own choice is crucial to developing true readers.
I also have thought about implementing the use of newspaper articles in my classroom, and really appreciated Gallagher's example of his article of the week. I wish that he had given more information about how he used this and why they were given the entire week for the assignment. I like the idea of giving them opportunities to chose articles themselves at times too though in something that they may be interested in. This may make them more intrigued in actually reading newspapers for an attempt to make them life-long advocates for this type of literature. Does anyone have any ideas about how else to implement other types of reading into your language arts classroom that will help them become the life-long readers that we hope that they will become?
