Four Blocks: Self-Selected Reading

Self-Selected Reading
The Self Selected Block includes teacher read-aloud.

While the children read, the teacher conferences with individual children.

Self-Selected Reading includes (and usually begins with) teacher read-aloud. The teacher reads to the children from a wide range of literature. Next, children read "on their own level" from a variety of books the teacher has gathered together and keeps on a bookshelf or (more popularly) in dishpans or buckets. The teacher selects books for the classroom library on themes they are studying, easy and hard library books, old favorites, new easy predictable books, etc. While the children read, the teacher conferences with and takes anecdotal records on several children each day. Some teachers choose to spend part of this block with a small group reading an "easy" book together and giving them instruction "on their level". The block usually ends with one or two children sharing their book with the class in a "reader's chair" format.

Making the Self Selected Reading Block Multilevel

Self selected reading is, by definition, multilevel. The component of self selected reading that makes it multilevel is the fact that children choose what they want to read. These choices, however, can be limited by what reading materials are available and how willing and able children are to read from the available resources. To make our self selected reading block as multilevel as possible:

We collect the widest range of levels, topics and genres of books we can. In our classrooms, you will see chapter books in first grade and very easy books in third grade.
We read aloud a variety of books--including a few chapter books in first grade and some very easy informational books in third grade. Linda Gambrell from the University of Maryland says that when you read a book aloud to children, you "bless" that book and then all the children know that is an "OK" book to be reading.
In our weekly conferences with children, we praise the reading of all the children and steer our struggling readers toward easy--but interesting--books and our advanced readers towards challenging books.
If we have a lot of third graders who need to read easy books, we set up programs in which they read to younger children and thus have a real purpose for engaging easy books.
We also remember that the topic of a book is critical and children will often read books that are too easy—or even too hard—for them if they are really interested in that topic or author. We do encourage children to read on their level but we remember that this is called the “Self Selected Reading” Block and that children selecting the books that will turn them into readers is the major goal.

Self-Selected Reading Idea-Early First Grade

Another variation you will see during the self selected reading block has to do with how children read books. A commonly-observed phenomenon in homes where four-year olds have books and someone to read those books to them is what we call pretend reading. Young children want to do all the things that the big people can do. They pretend to cook, to drive, to be the mommy or the daddy and they pretend they can read. They do this pretend reading to a younger child or to a stuffed animal and they do it with a book which they have insisted on having read to them over and over until they can "read" the book! (In fact, this insistence on having a favorite book read hundreds of time is probably motivated by their desire to learn to read!)

Another way young children read books is by reading the pictures. This is usually done with an informational picture book on a topic of great interest to the child. The parent and the child have probably looked at "the airplane book" or "the dinosaurs book" many times, spending more time talking about the pictures than actually reading the words. In fact, some of these books have wonderful pictures and lots of sophisticated text and parents don't read the text at all, they just talk with the child about the pictures.

We teach our early first graders that they are three ways to read. You can "pretend read" by telling the story of a familiar story book. You can "picture read" by looking at a book about real things with lots of pictures and talking about all the things you see in the pictures. And you can read by reading all the words. Early in the year, we model all types of reading and look at books and decide how children at their age would probably read the book.
"Goldilocks and the Three Bears is a book you could pretend read because you know the story so well. Let's practice how you might pretend read it if you choose it for self selected reading time."
"How would you read this book about the zoo? It's got lots and lots of words in little tiny print but you could read it by picture reading. Let's practice picture reading."
"Now, here is an alphabet book. You see just one word and it goes with the picture. You can probably read this book by reading the words."

Once children know that there are three ways to read books, no child ever says, "I can't read yet!"

Teaching children that there are three ways to read-- pretend reading, picture reading, reading the words--is a variation only used in first grade. Because we provide lots of easy reading books on all kinds of topics, we expect our second and third graders to read books by reading the words. If an individual second or third grader need to begin at the pretend reading or picture reading level, we do this with that child during the conference, not with the entire class.

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