SSR please!

Students need to read, it’s non-negotiable. Sustained Silent Reading (SSR) must be implemented into classrooms, specifically English, during school time so that it is most beneficial for the students (Garan and DeVoodg, 2008). SSR may be used in a variety of ways to be used in the classroom, but it is important to monitor students, and for the students to have autonomy when they read alone. Teachers must be mindful of three skills needed for students to comprehend sentences – anaphora, connectives, and appositives – during SSR so that students are able to read alone and have a pleasant experience reading (Mesmer and Rose-McCully, 2018). I am sure that most English teachers already implement SSR because they believe in the importance of being able to read. As I have mentioned before in a prior post, if you cannot read, you will not be educated. SSR provides students a chance to read a book they may like during school time, even if it is for fifteen minutes, that they may not be able to do at home – students may have to take of siblings, work or must do other things that take time away from the students being able to reading. As one of my colleague states, “I love it. It gives students a chance to read and, if they need the time, reflect on themselves. SSR gives them the time to find a book they like and read it. It gives them opportunities to discover a passion for something they generally may not have had the chance to do in a strict test-based curriculum.” SSR gives students a chance to get to know themselves as readers and what books or topics they like to read. Typically, teachers are pressured to have students read a certain text because of the mandates of a school site or district. Let students read books they like!

For students to read well, they must comprehend the sentences they are reading. When someone is reading, they may come across something that is called an anaphoric relationship – this is when a word or group of words are replaced by another word or group of words within a sentence or across sentences (Mesmer and Rose-McCully, 2018). For example, “Keith is cool. He is also a mathematics teacher”. Students need to identify that “Keith” and “he” mean the same thing. This is a fairly simple example, but when students read books that have words they are unfamiliar with, they struggle. Teachers need to invest time in teaching what an Anaphora is to their students. The students use it daily in their speaking, and they need to get accustomed to seeing it in their reading.

Another skill of reading comprehension is connectives. As Mesmer and Rose-McCully (2018) noted, a connective is “a word that explicitly links one clause to another (e.g., and, but, that, which) or connects two adjacent sentences (e.g. however, thus)” (p.456). Students struggle with connectives, at times, when they are trying to get a point across. Teachers need to teach how and when to use connectives. Rather than just giving them a list of definitions of connectives, the teacher must provide practice time for the students through different activities – fill in the blanks or sentence matching with the use of a connective. Practice builds great habits if done correctly.

The other skill that students need for reading comprehension is appositives. As Mesmer and Rose-McCully (2018) state, “An appositive noun, noun phrase, or noun clause that is set off by commas and immediately follows a noun. The appositive renames the non and provides more information about it” (p.459). For example, “My brother, John, is a teacher” or “My brother John is a teacher”. The former refers to only having one brother named John, and the latter refers to one of the brothers named John. It is important that students understand that, the meaning of a comma being there and a comma not being there, it implies different meanings.

This can be implemented into a mathematics classroom through application of the content being learned. Students can learn how to decipher what is being asked for through closed reading. SSR can be implemented in the classroom but through brief moments at a time.

References:

Garan, E. M., & Devoogd, G. (2008). The Benefits of Sustained Silent Reading: Scientific

Research and Common Sense Converge. The Reading Teacher, 62(4), 336–344.

Mesmer, H. A., & Rose-McCully, M. M. (2018). A Closer Look at Close Reading: Three Under-the-Radar Skills Needed to Comprehend Sentences. The Reading Teacher, 71(4), 451–461.