What Works and What Doesn't
To help all children in Arizona learn to read proficiently by the end of third grade, LEAs, schools, and educators can focus their efforts and resources on instructional strategies that are proven by research studies to produce their intended results. And, very importantly, they should no longer use practices without such solid evidence of effectiveness.
Sustained silent reading shows no impact on improving reading and can take up valuable classroom time.
Having students read for a sustained period of time silently on their own was a daily practice used in nearly every reading classroom across the country. Unsupervised, independent reading is often known by acronyms such as “D.E.A.R.” — drop everything and read— or “S.S.R.” — sustained silent reading. Students choose any book and read silently for a specific length of time established by the teacher. The practice was used to motivate students to engage in reading.
Despite the prevalence of sustained silent reading (SSR) in elementary school classrooms, the National Reading Panel did not find sufficient evidence to support its use as an effective strategy to improve reading achievement.
Traditionally, SSR lacks any student-teacher interaction or teacher monitoring and leaves struggling students on their own. Based on research that shows little-to-no impact on helping students become better readers, some experts suggest that traditional SSR should not be prioritized during reading instructional time, as it wastes valuable classroom time that could be spent on quality interactions that teach students how to learn to read well.
An alternative to unsupervised, independent reading is a newer approach called Scaffolded Silent Reading (ScSR) that decreases reading errors and increases reading comprehension and fluency rates. In this supervised independent reading approach, students are not left entirely on their own. Teachers scaffold and support students during independent reading time. There are teacher-student conferences, coaching on book selection across a variety of genres, and students are held accountable for setting goals, reading a certain number of books within a given timeframe, and completing response projects where they share what they read with other students.
References
The Reading Teacher, Reutzel, et al. 2008, Scaffolded Silent Reading: A Complement to Guided Repeated Oral Reading That Works!.
Shanahan On Literacy, Sorting Out the Arguments Over Independent Reading.