Spring is upon us, even here in Michigan.

With sunshine peeking in through classroom windows, your students are no doubt asking to have class outside. After all those cold winter months, they’re like rehabilitated animals itching to get out and stretch their legs.

Over time, wildlife doctors have learned what skills and techniques animals need to learn to survive in the wild without their care. Thus, reintroduction programs have to be planned carefully, ensuring that the animals have those necessary skills before their release from captivity. Zoologists must also study the animals after the reintroduction to learn whether the animals are thriving successfully in their new ecosystems.

After two years of enrollment in our high school’s school-within-a-school, At-Risk program, my students dramatically grow as readers, moving on average between of 2-5 grade levels. Following their sophomore year, they will exit the Academy and be reintroduced into the general high school population, where they will not experience the same level of intervention.

Since they’ll no longer live in captivity, my students must learn how to live as readers in the wild. And thus, if I want them to survive (and the work we’ve done to persist) students must learn how to become self-directed, independent readers.

From the Book Whisperer

In 2013, Donalyn Miller addressed this issue in her second book Reading in the Wild: The Book Whisperer’s Keys to Cultivating Lifelong Reading Habits. Certainly her first book holds a special place in my heart with its enormous impact on my classroom, but this one has such power as she asks: Are we really teaching readers if they only read with us?

Last week, Penny Kittle interviewed Donalyn for The Book Love Foundation podcast {Subscribe to the podcast, if you haven’t done so yet. It’s fantastic!}, and they discussed this evolution of her thinking—how we need to shift the responsibility from the teacher back to the students.

In Part 1 of Episode 7, Donalyn says:

“Teachers cannot drive the reading lives of their students year after year after year. If we’re not passing over the keys to their reading lives to the children…, then what are we doing?

It’s not enough to have one great year with one great teacher… I realized that part of it was that my students relied on me… Those scaffolds are meant to be temporary. They’re meant to come down.”

Strategies to Build Independent Readers

This got me thinking about the scaffolds I provide as I’m trying to support the independent reading lives of my students before they are released into the wild. Through the year, I support my students do the following:

1. Speed date a stack of books from varying genres by reading/previewing each book for 30 seconds during “Book Frenzy.” Add possible titles to your To-Read List. Swap and steal books from your classmates. 
2. Sign-up for Goodreads to rate previously read books, write book reviews, record to-read books, find book suggestions, and engage with online community of readers. 
3. Read everyday in class for at least 10 minutes. 
4. Engage in 1:1 reading conferences with the teacher.
5. Enjoy a shared whole-class novel with the class as the teacher regularly reads aloud. 
6. Complete a “Reading Interest-a-lyzer” on Google Forms to determine interests and preferences (via Donalyn’s The Book Whisperer).
7. Begin Reading Invitation, where students are challenged to choose and read 20+ books throughout the year from a varied genre requirement chart. 
8. Write entries in the Big Idea Books and respond to classmates’ entries (from Penny’s Book Love). 
9. Study Latin Word Chunks by discovering examples, drawing visual representations, and deciphering meaning in context.
10. Track Reading Rates after setting Quarterly Goals.
11. Analyze adolescent literacy research through Articles of the Week.
12. Maintain To-Read Lists during teacher-led Book Talks and student-led Book Waterfalls.
13. Watch professional and student Book Trailers using YouTube.
14. Create “over-vacation goals” and pack up book stacks.
15. Read and analyze a student Reading Ladder mentor text.  Design the rubric. Emulate the Reading Ladder mentor texts after analyzing the complexity of one’s own book list.
16. Read, analyze, and emulate mentor examples of professional and student Book Reviews found on various blogs, online publications, and Goodreads.
17. Write reflections after charting Lexile scores following the Scholastic Reading Inventory tests. {My district uses the SRI as one snapshot data point to measure students’ reading proficiency.}
18. Celebrate reading successes!

Now some of these scaffolds must be done in the classroom with my support; however, the intention behind all of the strategies is that they eventually lead to strong, independent reading habits that will carry on beyond my class, beyond high school, and into their flourishing, wild and free lives.

Your Turn . . .

• What strategies do you use to scaffold your readers towards independence?
• Have you noticed that your students seem to regress once they leave your class? What do you do about it?

Thanks . . . to Penny Kittle and the Teacher Learning Sessions for producing quality podcasts each week. You bring such inspiration to my commute!

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