Good Example Of Pursuing Sustained Silent Reading Article Review

Brief Summary

Valerie Lee’s journal article entitled “Becoming the Reading Mentors our Adolescents Deserve: Developing a Successful Sustained Silent Reading Program” explains the importance of creating an environment that engenders joy in reading. An approach called Sustained Silent Reading (SSR) is introduced to help adolescent students to develop a sustained interest in reading books. Lee took off from telling the story of how her reader son quit reading and how he eventually regained his voraciousness in reading. She said it was a concerted effort from her and her son’s teacher. They gave him the space to choose what he wants to read. Lee gave her the freedom to choose a book that would give him the joy. One day, her son wanted her to accompany him in a book store and that time, he chose a book and read it in two weeks. With that point Lee was inspired to use the SSR approach to her students to validate its effectiveness. She was guided by the principles namely: distributed time, conducive environment, appeal, access, importance of encouragement, non-accountability, and the need for follow-up activities. True enough, after several challenges from the first implementation of SSR, her students started showing interest in reading.

“How”

As a kindergarten teacher, I can use the material to engender among my students a joy in reading rather than reading as a necessity. For my next one week of lessons, I will use SSR. During our first meeting, I will read to them an interesting story, after reading it, I will tell them that with reading, they can any story they want. Of course, they will not be able to read a book as they are still in the process of learning to recognize and pronounce words. The next step is bringing them to the school library for them to access any children’s book that they want to see. I will instruct them to pick one and browse it for 30 minutes. As kids, they are expected to choose books that are full of visuals. After reading silently, I will ask them what particular aspect of the children’s book they can remember. In this part, I will refrain myself from correcting any wrong interpretation in order to encourage them to continue browsing and reading.
The next step is introducing them new words. After the short lecture, I will hand them a chosen children’s book that contains a story with the new words. I will let them again read it in 30 minutes in order to digest the relationship of the new words with the story. Silent reading will become a staple activity in the classroom. But I will not command them to read a specific material. I will encourage them to choose what they want to read in the 30 minutes daily routine.