Read to Self: Just a Kid and a Book.

Date: Monday, January 5, 2020

Place: My classroom

Student: Mrs.Mims, could we start doing Read to Self again because I got this great book for Christmas and I just want to read it.

Here's what's funny, and by funny, I mean ironic. During the break, I was thinking about how I had pretty much eliminated Read to Self from our daily schedule. (Don't worry, I did not spend my entire break thinking about work.😉)

What had happened was... there were so many other obligations to be met, and it just kinda, sorta, disappeared, vanished, was gone.
However, a lot of these obligations were taking place in front of a computer; Dreambox, Imagine Learning, completing their assignments on Schoology, and of course, digital reading websites. I am all for integrating tech, but this was getting to be a little too much screen time.

They needed to read. Just read. Read a book.

I do have Book Club on Mondays and Fridays. Thanks to DonorsChoose, I have plenty of novels the students  can access. But, it's not the same as curling up in a video chair, couch, those comfy flexible seats we just got from, yeah, DonorsChoose, and reading on their own.

Every day. And yes I mean every day, since we have returned from break, that kid I mentioned above, comes to tell me how many more pages he has read during our Read to Self time. Or someone will point out one of our Vocabulary words. Or they will tell me something great that happened in their story. Or, they will share something with a classmate. Or... I could go on and on about how valuable this time is, if... we want to create READERS, and not test takers.

I'm not saying my kids aren't ever going to get reading passages. As much as I detest it, SBAC is real. But, with no regrets, I am going to continue to give them their 15 minutes and let them read to, and by, themselves.
Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash