By fourth or fifth grade, many striving readers have lost their self-confidence and the belief that, with hard work, they can reach a goal. Whether these students were on a computer reading program, in a grade-level basal program, or listening to a required novel, they weren’t reading. Research by Allington, Krashen, Howard, Miller, and Ripp points to the need for students to read wonderful books to develop reading skill and expertise. Voluminous reading is an intervention.
This book will suggest ways to organize instruction so students in ELA classes and across the curriculum read voluminously every day. It will explain that there is no program that is the magic bullet for creating schools full of readers. The magic bullet is having skilled teachers who are ongoing learners and class libraries in all subjects, book rooms for storing instructional genre units, and alternate texts on topics studied in content subjects.
