We are adopting a Balanced Literacy Approach in all the elementary classrooms across our district next school-year. One of the components of Balanced Literacy is Independent Reading. Students need to be able to read books they can access on their own for 25-30 minutes a day in kindergarten.
Since most leveled readers at this age are short, kindergarten students need around 12-18 books in their own book box every day. These books need to be switched out every one to two weeks. That means for a class of twenty kindergarten students, we would need and average of 240-360 leveled readers in each classroom.
To allow for choice and interest, we would want many more than that to keep students motivated. These leveled readers will be a valuable resource for our classroom! Starting in kindergarten, if a student reads 20 minutes a day, they will hear 1.8 million words per year. They will have read for 851 hours by 6th grade and on standardized tests, they will likely score better than 90% of their peers.
My teammates and I switch books throughout the year, so these books will eventually benefit all 80 of our kindergarten students across four classrooms!
About my class
We are adopting a Balanced Literacy Approach in all the elementary classrooms across our district next school-year. One of the components of Balanced Literacy is Independent Reading. Students need to be able to read books they can access on their own for 25-30 minutes a day in kindergarten.
Since most leveled readers at this age are short, kindergarten students need around 12-18 books in their own book box every day. These books need to be switched out every one to two weeks. That means for a class of twenty kindergarten students, we would need and average of 240-360 leveled readers in each classroom.
To allow for choice and interest, we would want many more than that to keep students motivated. These leveled readers will be a valuable resource for our classroom! Starting in kindergarten, if a student reads 20 minutes a day, they will hear 1.8 million words per year. They will have read for 851 hours by 6th grade and on standardized tests, they will likely score better than 90% of their peers.
My teammates and I switch books throughout the year, so these books will eventually benefit all 80 of our kindergarten students across four classrooms!