Differentiation and Collaborative Groups

Chapter 11 was unique in that it really broke down the ways that each of the chapters prior explained ways to differentiate through quantity, variety and choice. In using a variety of teaching techniques, learning tools, tailoring lessons and providing stimuli for different kinds of learners, and adopting a classroom library with a diverse shelves, teachers create a rich learning environment that is conducive for each of their learners' individual abilities and interests.

According to Allington and Cunningham, collaborative groups are great for the classroom because offer a teaching alternative to one on one teaching because with only one instructor in the classroom is just not realistic or always effective. Partners are good choices for class read-alouds because they allow every student the opportunity to respond and share their thoughts as you read to the class without taking the amount of time you personally addressing each student would. Reading partners are also useful because some students are eager to help encourage struggling students and they will provide the appropriate challenges and support if given the opportunity or paired well. The activities chosen as these paired readings take place and the amount of time allotted to interacting together will influence how productive reading partners are. It is inevitable that students will finish activities at different paces, so "filler" activities are also a must to ensure that every group has the opportunity to finish work at their own appropriate paces. 

This would be a good reference for reading partner activities. I especially liked this because it offers similar discussion to the discussion and questions that were suggested in the chapter for talking partners during whole class read-alouds. It would allow for reinforcement of specific questions and consistency.

Literature circles, like the ones we did over the course of this semester, were also mentioned in this chapter. However, one variation mentioned is to have each group read different books by the same author. I think that this would be cool to use if I were to assign a group assignment on different authors. Each group could study a different author and notice patterns, themes, unique illustrations, consistencies in target audiences, etc. and share their findings and maybe brief summaries of the books they examined with the class in a literature cafe setting (mentioned in a previous post) at the end the week. This would allow me to tailor the assigned readings to best suit various reading levels while also allowing students to choose books for their interests. 

A few weeks ago, I had to write my first CSEL draft, and a huge part of my learning theory and classroom application focused on inclusion. Collaborative groups and this chapter will be really useful for me in that regard because they allow me to specialize learning for different abilities and provide a forum for students to engage with one another in a productive, positive way. I want to nurture a community of learners who all feel included, involved, and important; group work or team work will have a huge part in developing an excited, interconnected community.

How do you think you will implement group work in your classroom?

Guided Reading

Guided reading involves the teacher providing students with scaffolding support as they read to development their reading and fluency skills. Instruction during guided reading generally should focus on students' use of specific reading strategies to enhance their ability to choose and apply a variety of reading strategies when they read independently.

According to Parker and Reutzel in But I Only Have Basal: Implementing Guided Reading in the Early Grades, guided readings typically progress through three steps:

1. The teacher introduces the story to help develop the students'  background knowledge.
2. The students are involved in a supported reading activity where the teacher introduces the story or part of a story, then the students quietly read aloud the identified text. During this step, the teacher observes as her students apply the strategies they know; as needed, she/he can provide support to help struggling students apply the appropriate reading strategies.
3. Once the story is complete, students are asked to follow up with an activity for extension of either the story or a new strategy learned while reading the story.

The overall goal of guided reading is to encourage and help develop children to become independent and fluent readers.

Here is a brief video that demonstrates how a guided reading in small groups might look:

Comprehension

Traditionally, comprehension has been tested, but it has not taught so that students retain their texts in the long-term. Comprehension, according to Gill, is affected by the reader, the text, and the situation. Readers meet text coming from different backgrounds, experiences, and moods which influence how they individually interpret meaning. Texts vary in their layout, content, complexities, and intent, and the situation or environment they are absorbed in and the purpose behind reading them. Gregory and Cahill provide that schemas, what readers already know that help them create bridges between their prior knowledge and the text, should be utilized and developed during comprehension instruction for young children. These connections are explained by the "Velcro Theory", which asserts that it is easier to remember text and information if we can attach it to information we already have in our heads.

A poster like this will help remind readers of the connections they should consider as they read. 

Just as it is when learning other subjects or skills, comprehension instruction should be more active and visible with young children. Visuals, repetition, reinforcements, and reminders (like the poster above) will help develop their ability to comprehend texts, which is essential to their success in later years of schooling. Activities, like the ones we participated in last week, will actively involve students with comprehension and connection skills.  

Which of the activities that we experienced last class do you think you would be most likely to use in your future classroom?

Vocabulary

All four of our readings for this week provided that vocabulary and reading are interdependent. A vivid vocabulary is vital for comprehending texts and for decoding words in texts that are unfamiliar; in addition, reading is one of the best ways, if not the best way, to develop a broader and more diverse vocabulary. When students first enter school, they vary in exposure to language and experiences with reading, and as Hart and Risley observed, children from less-educated homes tend to lag behind those from the working and professional socio-economic classes. Dalton and Grisham offer that what occurs as these students progress through school is known as the Matthew Effect, students with strong vocabulary and reading skills get stronger and students with weaker skills get weaker. To prevent this or to lower the numbers of students experiencing this, the articles suggest different teaching strategies and corresponding actives which will help with vocabulary development.

In Chapter 6, Allington and Cunningham claim that real, direct experience is best for retention of new words. Teachers can do activities with objects that they bring into the classroom from the "real world", like spatulas and ladders, then have descriptive and intensified discussions with the class about what the object is, what it does, what various activities it is used for, what stories students have with the object, etc. The objective is to create concrete ideas and provide evidence that will provide reinforcement of the word's meaning in different contexts. I liked the idea of teaching morphemes because I think it would be beneficial for students to understand root words. Knowing roots will help deconstruct unfamilar words as they read, and knowing how certain prefixes and suffixes create new meanings is also important for comprehension.

The chapter mention word dramatization, and I found this activity on Pinterest. I have used beach balls in the past in a similar way for class discussions, and I like activities like this because they add a little excitement and encourage more engagement from all the students.  

 Also, as if my previous posts haven't alluded to this already, I really like journals. The suggested "Vocabulary Journal" is great because students would have to find the meaning of words within the text, rather than looking in dictionaries and indexes. This would develop a really practical and vital skill that is used frequently at higher levels of education.

Lane and Allen describe classrooms with routine times designated to engaging the classroom community; of these, what I liked most were the classroom chores that can begin the year as simple, well-known and understand descriptions and names and then progressively become more advanced through synonyms and connections made during this designated time.

They also mention modeling sophisticated vocabulary which led my thought, once again, to Mrs. Tina. She describes to her students that those who are playing on their own on the playground or in the classroom are playing "independently". She reinforces that sometimes this is something that students choose to do, so overtime when I was leading her class in the afternoons, students would come up to tell me that "they just want to play independently, but so and so is trying to play with them, too". I remember being caught off guard by their choice of vocabulary the first time I first experienced a five year old complain about his hindered independence.

Which technology-based strategy did you find most useful of the ones provided by Dalton and Grisham?
Do you have any experience with Word Play or other activities that you found to be successful?

Word Study

Word study is important because the ability to spell and break words down influences students' ability to read, as well. At the elementary level, students begin to explore spelling and writing. Cunningham and Cunningham explain that between kindergarten and third grade students are being encouraged more and more to write with invented spelling. In doing so, students develop the ability to decode that is significant when reading. "Making Words" activities involve giving individual children some letters which they use to make words. These activities should be 15 minutes long and their end product should be 12-15 words per student. Students should begin with 2-letter words, then build on them with 3-letter, then 4-letter, and so on. Activities of this sort are effective because with one instructional format and activity, students are provided with countless possibilities for experimenting and discovering how our alphabet works.

Having the ability to spell, however, is not very useful without developing an understanding of what words mean and why they are significant to text. Therefore, Yopp and Yopp explore activities that encourage students to learn new words, find their meaning, and apply them to text and other aspects of their lives. One activity suggested involves students reading a text, taking note of 10 words they believe are important, writing them on adhesive strips, and then making a class chart to see which words were most commonly identified as significant. This is a really good activity because it focuses on finding big ideas in text, on identifying words with important meaning, and then on connecting their mean to the main ideas. Emphasizing looking up new words and understanding word meaning further prompts word consciousness; it also actively engages students with words so they can relate them to other words and contexts, explore how the different parts of word influence their meaning, and link words to their own experiences.

Two of my roommates recently moved out of the house we rent from my parents, and they left behind a shelving piece like the one on the left. My parents wanted to toss it but, with my future classroom in my forethoughts, I insisted we reinforce it, paint it, and use it until I can put it in my classroom. (They both rolled their eyes, but it is still standing in the soon-to-be-revamped dining room--BIG WIN for me so early in the week.) Anyway, when I began thinking of my post for this week, I had the "manipulative"/"free-play" area of my classroom on my mind. Then, Yopp and Yopp mentioned, "classrooms that promote word consciousness stimulate students' awareness of, interest in, and curiosity about words so that word learning extends beyond a particular lesson or the confines of a particular lesson"(158). I wanted to find activities that I could use as reinforcers to whatever we are doing with word study, and I wanted the activities to be inviting and fun.

"Let's Make Words!": When I initially came across this, I thought that it would be wasteful to have each student who wanted to do this activity cut out their own letters and etc. In my class, I would probably laminate the pages, cut the letters out and put them in labeled bags; then students would just need to grab a back and a laminated dotted page and practice. They could also fill the lines in with dry-erase markers if they wanted to record the words they create.

"Word Charts": There were a few of these on Pinterest, so I just chose one picture. However, they way that students list words could vary. They can have base letters and interchange certain letters to build words (as seen above) or they could be given a 2-letter root word and then different letters or letter combinations to build more words/create larger words. If you wanted, you could easily make both activities and rotate between them for variety every so often.

"Sort and Spell": I like this because it could be turned into a competitive activity where students challenge one another with word lists and then have to chose a way to organize them on the boards. They would, of course, be expected to spell correctly with the words provided for them. This activity would offer a multitude of options for sorting off and on the board (by number of letter, by sound, by relating categories, etc.) which would encourage creativity and also, with a little more autonomy, students' would be more engaged in their choice of sorting and in the words that are in the lists they choose.

-Did you find any other games that would apply to this that you might want to share?

-Did you find that Cunninghams' or Yopps' piece was more important than the other or do you agree that both are of equal significance to reading development? 

In Class: Readers Theater

Readers Theater is the use of a script related to a picture book or children's novel/book. The students read a script that is adopted from a book, taking turns reading each line. By doing this, the students interact with the story with more expression than they would by just reading the story by themselves. There are no props, costumes, or acting out of the story. The audience should visualize the story by the students reading the script out loud.

This helps to:
-develop fluency
-integrate reading, writing, speaking, and listening
-engage students and motivate them to read
-create purpose and confidence with reading
-provide an opportunity for collaborative learning

It looks like:

This is how it would work:

Reading Fluency

Cunningham and Allington's Chapter 4 introduces us to the methods of teaching reading fluency. This comes from rereading easy books, repetition of words, inflections, reading in groups, etc.; all of these contributing to each student's ability to read words in context, quickly, accurately, and with appropriate expression. It introduces different methods of reading in whole class contexts that will benefit independent reading, and of the provided suggestions, I like chanting and writing the words and the ideas of echo and choral readings. These combined with high-frequency word walls could help encourage reading and writing, as well as, build confidence in reading and writing for students to share.

Deeney's introduction to prosody, with regard to signal words and punctuation, could be developed or strengthened through echo and choral readings. Especially because as a group, the students could be more inclined to inflect appropriately or use exaggerated expression of punctuations. In addition, activities involving word chants and writing will also encourage excitement in reading with fluency.

Activities involving excitement over easy words and books both at home and in classrooms will encourage creativity in writing and bold expression in reading and writing activities. Rasinski introduces the idea of poetry cafes and readers' theatre festivals on Fridays. I really liked this idea, only maybe on more of a monthly basis. If students do the chanting activities and are enthusiastic throughout the week/month in reading aloud with their peers, I think that the cafes and festivals would be successful.

Poetry journals could be an "at-home" activity where the parents, siblings, etc. are encouraged to write poetry on the weekends with their children using vocabulary and contexts relevant to the class material from each week, and then allow the children to perform readings of their work at home. This would be engaging, fun, and be source of reinforcement over the weekend or holidays that seems more like a game than school work.

It would also provide some options over the month for the in-class cafes or theaters. If they have 3 or 4 poems to choose from over the course of a few weeks, the work they choose to present the class will use a broader vocabulary and more variety in content or expression.

Combining classroom engagement with at-home engagement and encouragement of expression and reading, could provide every student with a positive sense of "self" and capability that they can read aloud, they can write well and creatively, and they could be influential even when their writing seems "silly" or "meaningless". Asha Christensen wrote about her struggle to be inspired or put words to a page, and she was able to present her poem as a TedTalk partially because of her incredibly fluent delivery.

How would you encourage creativity for writing in your class?
How might you involve parents in the learning process?

Coaching Word Recognition

In Chapter 5 of Classrooms that Work, Cunningham and Allington discuss methods of coaching word recognition. The text mentions, "English is not a one-sound, one-letter language, there are different ways to pronounce certain letter patterns"(Cunningham and Allington 66). Before I continued with the chapter, I paused and considered a conversation I had while I was in Botswana with Joonas and Pekka, two of my international peers from Finland. Our conversation initiated because we were learning Setswana and I was horrendous at it because it required exaggerated rolling of R's and certain click-like sounds were difficult for me to create. Some of these sounds were designated by  "tl" and "tsh", those combinations were unfamiliar to me, and so the corresponding sounds were hard to understand. The "tl" is found in dialects of more indigenous Spanish, so my boyfriend (who was also in Setswana with us) could generate the correct sounds, as well. Returning to Joonas and Pekka, we began discussing that Finnish words had some crazy sounds and strange letter combinations that I, as an English speaker, believed were weird and more difficult than English. They disagreed, however, claiming that English was more difficult because we have words like "tear" that have the same spelling and different meanings. I specially remember Joonas saying something to the effect of, "Why would you do that?".

After my flashback, the discussion in the chapter that followed was especially interesting. It describes the process of looking for patterns in unfamiliar words, searching mentally for knowledge of similar patterns. Once pronunciation is decided, the reader rereads the sentence to see if the pronunciation makes sense given the context of the surrounding words. They continue on in their reading if it works, but if it does not, they look at the letters again and think what else would "look like this and make sense". I kind of laughed to myself when I imagined Joonas coming to tear in a context meaning a ripped piece of paper or something of that effect and going through the process mentioned and being completely confused because "tear" in the context of watering eyes did not make sense at all, but that is the proper spelling. Because of confusions like this, the concept of "coaching" is of increasing importance for reading instruction and developing word recognition for both English speakers and especially those English language learners.

As of last week, I will be volunteering at the Hispanic Center in Knoxville helping children with supplemental reading and math lessons in the evenings to enhance their performance in their normal classroom settings. Of the lessons provided, I especially like the "Using Words You Know" lesson and could see myself using it in the near future. You begin by presenting a few words that students know, then pronounce and spell these words. Then you make a chart and list words that usually rhyme with the initial words and have the same spelling pattern. Underline the spelling patterns to emphasize the similarities. Then show them some new words which they will add to the corresponding lists.

This was a similar activity that I thought would be useful and would be good as an independent activity that would reinforce what the class had done with the lists.

An activity of that nature would help set the groundwork for the "coaching" described in Clark's article. She explains that coaching provides cues in two ways: general cues that promote thought and cues that prompt specific action. Cues begin broad and become more focused on specific actions as needed. One of the concepts that she mentions that I liked most about coaching was to encourage the entire class to engage in word recognition which helps strengthen all of their knowledge and ability because it makes them all think about the unfamiliar word. I thought this was also important because it could alleviate some of the anxiety or pressure to decode alone experienced by the students who initially prompt the cues. This strengthens classroom community with the concept of "How can we?", rather than individual student internalization of "me vs. them" or "I can't" mindsets at the fundamental and base levels of their educational experience.

What lessons did you find particularly interesting? Did any personal experiences with coaching or word recognition come to mind as you read? 

Phonemic Awareness and Literacy Strategies

The readings for this week focused on developing literacy skills in pre-k and kindergarten, and provided a strategies and notable supplements for reading and writing foundations. All three articles emphasized development of literacy skills in young children and sought to encourage children to identify similar letter sounds, syllables, and acknowledging those words that rhyme or maybe that sound the same but offer different spellings and meaning.

Yopp and Yopp's discussion of phonemic awareness provides that instruction must be deliberate for certain literacy skills, not incidental. According to the text, effective instructional instruments include songs, nursery rhymes, wordplay games, riddles; the more playful and engaging an activity, the more beneficial it will be. It is also crucial that the activities are social and allow for experimentation with language.

This discourse for literacy education seems simple when you think of all of the readily available resources for song, games, etc. However, the  social aspect of the activities is more important than you may initially realize, especially for special needs. My brother is almost 10 and attends an all autistic/special needs school in New Jersey where my dad lives. He is very smart; he can work any piece of technology, his memorization skills are incredible, and he can identify rhythms even with sounds that the average person fails to recognize (he plays the xylophone to the rhythm and note of the sound of the buzzing of the fluorescent lights at his therapy center). One our biggest struggles with him, however, is that he scripts from Sesame Street and some of his iPad games. He has literally gotten so good at it, that he can uses quotes in appropriate contexts and believes that counts as conversation.

He loves videos like this, and they have helped him recognize the process of reading and sounding out, but the only words he would write when we were first teaching him were the ones from these clips (Sesame Street videos are the first searches found one any phone, computer, or iPad he can find). Because he struggles with socializing, scripting in conversation and "silly talk" (scripting to himself completely out of any context) become his primary form of communication. For those who are going into special education, have you considered limited socialization skills and how certain tools could be counterproductive?

I preferred some of the points and suggestions that Bell and Jarvis posed in their piece because they offered observations and techniques that could empower students across a variety of backgrounds and circumstances. In the very beginning of their article, they mention that literacy is everywhere. Everywhere taking into consideration even less traditional literacy outlets, colored street lights, pictures and symbols on signs, cereal boxes, etc. I liked that taking things like this into consideration when introducing students to literacy allows them to feel empowered and have a sense of pride in having some prior literacy experience even if they are not from "bedtime story" homes. My little brother definitely loves bedtime stories, but his ability to read is still behind other children his age. However,  his love of Sesame Street and the fact that the majority of his collection is VHS has begun to improve his reading and writing skills.

He has begun to collect VHS's (from eBay--yes, he finds them on it himself and asks to order almost daily after school--and from yard sales) because he loves to carry the boxes around and read them. He also loves to write what the boxes say on the boards in his play area. This transition is a huge deal for his literacy, and it has encouraged him to read other things and attempt at writing other words. 

As for my future class, I liked the idea in Bell and Jarvis for a alphabet name chart. I even thought that to encourage those globalized minds, I could plan for teaching about the different regions or continents of the world and have an alphabet chart for the countries in the region. I also thought, addition to the journals from last week's post, to encourage creative writing and writing skills in general, Pen Pals would be a cool idea for my globally conscience classroom. 

This is just one source for something like that: http://kidworldcitizen.org/2011/11/11/pen-pal-programs/

I thought it would encourage curiosity for other cultures and allow them to be introduced to other places through the eyes of children their age around the world. I think it would also be great because it would emphasized how interconnected we are with the rest of the world.

How would you implement creative writing in your classes? 

What were some game ideas or activities that you thought would be effective in your classroom?

Foundations to Reading

Children who have encounters with literacy prior to beginning school tend to be more eager to learn to read, as well as, learn a little quicker than those who were not exposed as much to reading and writing. Cunningham focuses on the ways the young children experience literacy in their homes and how to set and build on reading and writing fundamentals in the classroom. At the beginning of Chapter 3, Cunningham explains that parents expose children to literacy in a number of ways, grocery lists, reading stories, reading signs, typing on computers, etc. They all show children how to follow written lines on a page, recognize the sounds of certain letters, learn sight words, and other reading fundamentals. Johnson's article on the Jones family expands this idea, emphasizing that the multiple generations incorporated literacy into the day to day lives. In doing so, they further supported one another and strengthened relationships, knew more about their communities, were able to complete everyday tasks, kept up with their finances, participated in spiritual activities, entertained themselves, and were able to pursue educations. They also provided that middle class, white families were not the only ones exposing their children to literacy; this is significant given the city they lived in. Cunningham continues on in the chapter to discuss the role of literacy development in classrooms.

I enjoyed that the discussion of how to teach reading, sight words, and phonemic awareness also included examples of actives and lesson plans. It made the read easier because I could visualize how the activity worked, how the students might react, and how it could help with mastery of whatever skill was being focused on. I was really keen about the "theme boards", some mentionable were the "Name Board" and an "Animal Board". I think that they are a cool concept because they allow the children to return to them throughout the day (wandering eyes and minds, you know how kids are) and think about what they may have discussed during the lesson and try to imagine or think of other words, sounds, etc. relative on their own. 

This was one board that I found and thought would be good to have, a world map would be even better. I also study Global Studies, so it is important to me that in my future classroom I create an environment that opens minds to what is happening in the rest of the world. This board was for students to pin where the book they were reading was set, but I think it could be good for funny current events or something like that.

I also like the ideas provided for stressing letter sounds and recognizing words with similar sounds, letters, etc. The alphabet song and books, I like because they encourage creativity and push students to think and review what they know and are learning.

This is a page from an "Alphabet Scrapbook", and I think this would be fun for students because they would have the freedom to fill the page with what they wanted for each letter. They also could use stickers, cutouts, etc. to decorate which I think would make the activity more excited and thought provoking on some levels. Different decorative mediums could also encourage them to write or attempt words, they can identify with the correct letter, but may not be able to illustrate with free-hand illustrating.

Lastly, with regard to writing development and encouragement, I liked that Cunningham emphasized that the focus should not initially be entirely on correctness, but rather on effort, curiosity, and creativity. I thought as I was reading that it could be cool to give each student a journal at the beginning of the year that was theirs to write and express themselves in throughout the day. That way if they were at their desks and done with whatever the assignment is, they can choose to write freely sometimes. 

One last example that I could see myself using is a "class directory" in a writing center. I know from my experience in classrooms that students enjoy writing notes and making up stories for their teacher and friends, so I think that something like this would encourage more writing and would reinforce "Name Game/Board" literacy activities done outside of "free time".

Effective Reading and Writing Instruction

In Cunningham's text, one of the concepts that stood out to me was the concept of cross-curricular connections and the integration of reading and writing into multiple subjects. One of my professors at UT actually mentioned that part of us knowing that we are receiving an education, versus simply regurgitating material only for through the extent of the course, is realizing the ways that our different courses relate to one another. I know that I did not really get as involved with making the connections completely on my own until the last few years when my Global Studies courses began to provide different perspectives of the same or similar concepts. It has made writing papers and research significantly easier. One of the questions that I found myself asking as I read was, "What are some examples I can think of that would be effective in making connections like the ones I find myself making now?", and I think that is a question that everyone should consider. One thing I thought of was Allington's "Tasks" portion of the six T's. He discusses self-regulation of work and readings and also the importance of small group discussion. As a future elementary school teacher, whose preference tends to be for 1st and 2nd grade levels, I have to consider what could be effective ways to teach younger students self-regulation. One example I found to guide students was this handout:

I like that a handout like this could help young students understand what that might want to consider as they read, in addition to making them more familiar with different components of the book (like inferring from book cover's and titles and things like that). I also like that it would be helpful to guide lower-achieving students who may not self-regulate well and provide some options that could potentially push high-achieving students to broaden their thinking. What are some other effective ways to help students self-regulate effectively?

Another aspect that I thought about from Allington's piece for was "Texts", and the emphasis on having variety. I immediately thought of all of the classrooms I have been in with a variety of book bins or designated shelves that divided up different types of books (picture, chapter, etc.) and different subjects or genres. However, one classroom I thought of, I thought had a really unique way of integrating new books while also encouraging excitement for reading from students. Mrs. Tina is the kindergarten teacher at Thackston school, and she chooses themes about every other week for her students. This theme guides them throughout their coursework and subjects for those couple of weeks. What is unique about her selection of "free reading" books is that the class will take trips every couple weeks to the library and the students choose some of the books that will be on the offered for the independent reading portions of their day. Mrs. Tina chooses some, too, and the books typically relate to whatever the class is studying in the upcoming weeks. I have personally seen this work well in the classroom because the students are thrilled to have some say in the texts, they really learn what the focus of those weeks are because of the different ways the content is integrated and the variation of stories that exemplify their new concepts, and the repetition over the course of a couple weeks helps the knowledge stay with them. 

Lastly, a notable concept that I liked was the idea of a "No Wandering" rule during independent reading mentioned by Cunningham. I have witnessed the wanderers in classrooms in the past, and they tend to distract other readers, as well as, hinder their own progress. In another effective classroom I spent time in, 2nd grade teacher, Miss Stacy, encouraged students to sit quietly and read by having a) an abundance comfortable seating/cushions for the students to choose from to enjoy during their reading time and b) a "caught in the act" door decor, in which students who were caught reading quietly might have their picture taken doing so and then displayed one the door. This incentive really encouraged students to sit quietly and read because to be the one who had their picture taken was very exciting and all of their classmates would congratulate them because they knew how good it felt to be the one caught, too. It was really sweet, and she made sure each student was photographed multiple times throughout the year.

This is just one idea I liked for a independent reading time. Especially because I know I have old shirts that I would love to keep, but never wear really. You just make pillows out of old shirts for your students to sit on. I also like that it would be easy to maintain, switch up occasionally, and clean if necessary.