Why Free Reading is the Best Thing Ever

My school has an interesting schedule. Monday, Tuesday and Friday we operate on a traditional schedule. Students go through periods 1-8. Wednesdays and Thursdays are our dedicated block days. On Wednesdays, students have their odd numbered classes for about 80 minutes and on Thursdays they have their even numbered classes.

Eighty. Minutes.

That's a long time! Fortunately, I've been in the business long even now that I have a semblance of an idea what I'm doing. I have a curriculum I love, I have some activities I can pull out of my sleeve at any time, and all of that. But even with that structure, eighty minutes is a long time to plan and prep for.

Enter free reading.

Granted, free reading isn't usually more than about ten minutes in my class. But it's still amazing, and a small chunk of time that I don't have to have a specific plan for.

I have spent the last 3-4 years building up my little library of Spanish readers so that I have enough books to accommodate student interests and ability levels, and just to have enough for each kid to have at least one in some of my larger classes. Most of my books are either from Fluency Matters (which apparently just merged with Wayside Publishing) or from TPRS books.

To aide my students in selecting a book that's appropriate for where they're at in their Spanish, I have a leveled system using colored stickers.

I honestly have no idea where these stickers came from or how long I've had them. But they have helped me keep my little library a little more organized.

I have a color associated with each approximate level. Green is for novice low/mid. Pink is for novice mid/high, and on it goes. Just this year I separated the past and present books onto separate shelves. Year 1 students spend the majority of their time in the present tense, so I like to have the books separated so that they can maximize their comprehension. I also wanted them to see that the vocabulary was not necessarily more difficult in certain books, it was just past v. present tense.

Students pick whatever book they want to read, we read (silently, to ourselves) for 8-10 minutes, and then students return their books from where they got them.

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Q and A

When do you start free reading?

It depends on the group of kiddos. With my current sophomores, I started with them in about April, maybe March of their freshman year. That was earlier than I had done with my previous class. In my classroom, we've at least gone through 6-7 units of the Somos curriculum before we begin free reading. Before that, it's hard for students to have enough vocabulary to follow along in a story.

What readers would you recommend?

I would say Fluency Matters is my go to, as far as where I actually purchase books. Although I was just on their site today and now a reader is 9$? Sheesh. It was only $7 less than a year ago. So maybe look around a bit.

Anyways, here are some of my favorites that novice learners have done well with:

La Familia de Federico Rico

This book is really goofy and quirky, and I rarely can find it on my shelf during free reading time. It has goofy stories about this kid's crazy family, there are a lot of images to aid in student comprehension, and any beyond-novice vocabulary throughout the book is defined on that page.

Bart Quiere un Gato.

This one is a little newer to me, but it's really fun. In this book, you follow the story of Bart, this kid who...wants a cat. But at the end of each page, you the reader get to decide what happens next. At the bottom of the page, you are given 2-3 options, and based on what you choose, you will open up to a given page in the book. So fun.

Llama en Lima

Ok, I might be a bit biased on this one. I did it as a class reader one year with my now juniors, and they still have a special place for it in their hearts as well. But I do see a lot of kiddos reading this one! This is a great example of a very low-level beginning reader. It's a cute little story about a llama who doesn't like living in the zoo, and explores Lima, Peru with his buddies.

Maria en Miami

I actually just got this book this past summer, but I think it's fun and cute. It's about a girl who wants to go to Miami with her friends, but her parents won't let her go....so she decides to go anyways. There are a lot of pages you read where the storyline is given as text messages between Maria and her friends.

What do you the teacher do during free reading?

Read.

Can you grade or get work done during this time? Yes, you can. And trust me-I know how great that temptation is. Time is what we need more of most, followed by a raise and 1+ more hours of sleep a night. But I would encourage you to read along with students, at least the vast majority of the time, for a few reasons:

1. You're modeling for them. You are demonstrating what it looks like to be a good reader.

2. By reading along with students, you are showing that this is not just something I threw at you because I had extra time to kill. This is a valuable activity.

3. It's nice to read through the readers you're offering to students, both to make sure they're appropriate for your student body, and to have an idea of what students are reading about. I at least have an idea of what is happening in most of the books on my shelf at this point. I don't say this to toot my own horn. I just like to know what students will be reading. And I've had three years now to familiarize myself with all of them.

4. This is a chance for you to refresh your own Spanish, especially if you're working with lower level students and need to keep up with your vocabulary. Last year I read through 1-4 of Harry Potter in Spanish. (I know, I should have finished them, they're amazing. Voldemort just started to get a little dark for me! Yes, I know I'm a wimp). Once you've previewed readers for your students, get something that you want to read! Your local library likely has some book options in Spanish, depending on where you live.

How do you pay for readers?

Mmm. Great question.

I spend a portion of my budget every year on readers. When I started, I had maybe 10-15 different books that students could read. I didn't even have enough that each kid could have one of their own in some of my classes.

If that is your situation, you might just have to wait for a bit to do free reading. The best cheap option in my experience is to type up your class stories each year, and print them out into a little booklet. (With a CI curriculum like Somos, my class makes up a story along with each unit). If you laminate a page as a cover and staple them together, they don't look so bad. These are free as long as you have a copy machine and a laminator. Here's one of my little homemade readers below.

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I think the most rewarding thing about free reading as a teacher is when I ask students to talk about what they're reading. Usually, I let them talk in partners or group. I will write a few questions on the board. Today it was:

-What is your book about?

-Do you like it?

-Would you recommend it to someone else?

I get to listen to their Spanish and hear what they have learned and what they're understanding. It's incredible how their brains pick up the language and how they learn new words, and even how to pronounce them, even without having hard them before. Earlier this week one of my year two students whipped out "hay mucho ruido" and I was floored. Is that an incredibly advanced statement? No, not necessarily. I just know that we've never covered that in class, and she used what she had learned in free reading to create new language.

Three cheers for free reading.