Why sustained silent reading is a must...

Sustained silent reading is a must at the high school level. There is no other way around it. The benefits are all there--increased test scores, increased graduation rates, increased engagement and comprehension. SSR is the best way for any school to build lifelong readers.

I am reminded of the benefits of SSR on a daily basis. Most recently, I was finishing up a round of golf out at our local country club. I drove my cart around to the shed so it could be cleaned and put up and there sat one of the students from the high school, we'll call him Bill. Bill's a nice guy, a good country kid, but not necessarily a stellar student. And there he sat, nose buried in a book. And he was well into it--he had been reading for a while.

The book was one that we supply at our high school in the classrooms. This student found the book during SSR and became a reader outside of school as well. This is the main benefit of SSR. Students have the time and opportunity to read and therefore become readers outside of school. This is how SSR works and why it is a must for high schools.

I love this poem...

How do I love thee? Let me count the ways...

by Elizabeth Barrett Browning

How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
I love thee to the depth and breadth and height
My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight
For the ends of Being and ideal Grace.
I love thee to the level of everyday's
Most quiet need, by sun and candle-light.
I love thee freely, as men strive for Right;
I love thee purely, as they turn from Praise.
I love thee with a passion put to use
In my old griefs, and with my childhood's faith.
I love thee with a love I seemed to lose
With my lost saints, --- I love thee with the breath,
Smiles, tears, of all my life! --- and, if God choose,
I shall but love thee better after death.

The Genre of Standardized Testing

I'm taking an assessment course this school year. Let me get it out in the open that I am a huge fan of authentic assessments and student-choice and rubrics, etc. As a classroom teacher, I often gave my students assignments that would push them to create--soundtracks, stage designs, costumes, meals...the list of possibilities was as long as their imaginations. So assessments were always fun. We did the typcial tests every now and then, and they had to learn research and be able to write papers, but there was a fun aspect to assessments in my English classroom.

With that said, I am intrigued by standardized testing. Research shows that high stakes testing is not an effective measurement of a student's growth. Yet we use it anyway. Since testing is not going to go away, it seems necessary that we learn to work within the boundaries that it can set up. We must teach our students how to cope with standardized testing just as we would teach any other genre in class.

So...standardized testing as a genre can lead me to some interesting study. Where to next? How do we implement it into daily learning? What can we do to help students cope with the cold, formal language of the tests that decide their future? Its something that I'm interested in looking into some more.