Read to Self begins with Great Success

I started Read to Self from the first day of Reading Essentials Class. However yesterday we developed an I chart and practiced building our stamina. I wondered how this lesson would go for middle school students. So I followed the format demonstrated by the Sisters in the book, Daily 5. I also viewed the video on www.thedailycafe.com.

As I taught the lesson, I felt like I was just copying what I had read and watched. And I guess I was. But it worked with my middle school students. I even had students model good and bad Read to Self behavior. In each grade, 6th, 7th and 8th, I picked a student to model bad behavior in my mind. When I asked for a volunteer, in each class the volunteer was the student that I thought would do the best job modeling inappropriate behavior. The models reveled in showing us what NOT to do. All three of them looked disappointed when I asked them to show us good behavior but they followed through doing a nice job.

Doing the students had built their stamina up to 12 minutes. They wanted more time but I held to 12 minutes which is 4 times more than the 3 minutes we started with just 2 days ago. At the end of today's Read to Self, one student said to me, "This class goes so fast. Read to Self feels like one minute." Just enough encouragement to keep me going in this class. More reports to follow!