Reading Independent Activities

Reading independent activities that establish a community of readers are important to incorporate in the first weeks of school. Teaching students how to read independently in a way that presents clear expectations requires stamina, practice, knowing oneself as a reader and important habits that should be explicitly taught in all grade levels. This crucial practice sets students up for success during independent reading time for the rest of the school year. These habits are taught through various activities for independent reading in the beginning of the year.

Before jumping into these reading independent activities, be sure to download this free guide, First Steps towards Data Driven Instruction: Ideas for Formative Assessment Organization if you are ready to get organized with formative assessment and responsive teaching in your classroom. This FREE guide will teach you how to set up an assessment station in your classroom to get all of your reading data organized so you can begin to use data to drive instruction.

What is Independent Reading?

The definition of independent reading has evolved for me over the years. In my early years of teaching, I spent much time building reading stamina using the graphs from the Daily 5. The gradual build up of stamina is so helpful in this program. If you haven’t tried their method, it really helps to boost motivation at the beginning of the year!

As my years in teaching continued, I delved deeper into the texts students were reading and spent time in the beginning of the year really getting to know students as readers. We called this their reading identity as we learned about who we were as readers. This included talking about the importance of independent reading, reading activities at home, likes and dislikes and really taking the time to get to know ourselves as readers before we fully jumped into selecting books. Read more here if you want to learn more about this process of finding a reading identity.

Stamina building in combination with understanding reading identities helped my students to develop excitement around reading that lasted. There was still some work to do with reading habits and practice of these skills. These habits included: choosing a good book, getting organized with materials, finding a good spot to read and checking in with yourself before beginning to read.

All of this preparation was turned into reading independent activities that students could work on as they practiced these skills and began to connect and engage with books.

Read this if you are wondering, “What does independent reading look like?”

True reading engagement comes when students are engrossed in books during that independent reading time. Some may not even hear you when you say it’s time to move on. Engaged students make movies in their mind as they read fiction and think deeply about topics while reading informational texts. These may seem like extreme examples but reading IS for everyone. ALL students can get to an exciting place in their reading journey if they have positive interactions with reading.

Independent Reading Activities

These activities start the year with a focus on engaged reading so students can understand why independent reading is important. Instead of telling students to read, let’s show them the why. This will open up endless possibilities that can come from reading a book.

Reading Identity

This independent reading activity is great for helping students to get to know themselves as readers. Each page of the activity has one or more prompts to get students thinking.

The prompts and activities include:

• Brainstorming– Think about reading, what comes to mind? Represent these ideas with pictures and words. This activity can be very telling! You will learn a lot about a student by the words they use to describe reading.
• Mindmap– Encouraging students to think about feelings about reading, likes/dislikes, books they’ve read, where/when they think to read and a few more. Using a mindmap to learn more about readers is interesting because some prompts speak more to a student than others. I love seeing which ideas connect with each student.
• I’m the kind of reader who…. finish the sentence in more than one way. This prompt can be challenging for students but to build confidence. It is great to use after some more basic prompts such as likes/dislikes.
• Describing a positive reading memory– These can be really special and important to a student. Often, students think about an important person in their life. This would be a great opportunity for some artwork or a display wall in the classroom!
• Who or where do you talk about reading? This prompt may catch students off guard but is a really cool one to use in preparation for book clubs. Most students’answers will change drastically by the end of the year as talking about reading becomes second nature.

All of these prompts and a few more a part of an elementary reading inventory. I love to use it at the beginning AND at the end of the year if time permits. You can grab them here for FREE.

Reading Habits

I use this FREE interactive notebook to stress why reading is important and offer my students some helpful reading habits. I’m fortunate that so many of my students come into my classroom as avid readers, but this resource has also helped me attract some who don’t already have that same love of reading.

Before talking about reading habits, I make sure to talk to students about WHY we read. There are a few videos that I love to use to promote these ideas. One video is a youtube clip by the author Tomie DePaoela. His inspiring video talks about all of the possibilities that can occur when reading. Students love hearing from a real author. Great discussions come from ideas around the why and purpose of reading. I love using an anchor chart to display all of these “whys” on sticky notes. Display this chart all year long!

After talking about the why, here are a few reading habits that I find imperative to teach explicitly in my classroom.

This digital learning activity will engage and encourage readers as they begin to practice independent reading for the school year, but one of my favorite added bonuses I’ve found is that it’s also encouraged my students to have better reading habits at home.

You can download this independent reading activity FREE on my TPT store now.

Teach Stop & Jots

Teaching stop and jots is an important skill for many future independent reading response activities. Students can use stop and jots in SO many valuable and meaningful ways. The Reading Strategies book, by Jennifer Serravallo, has some great anchor charts to use as you introduce stop and jots in the beginning of the year. This book is worth the price and filled with amazing anchor charts to explicitly teach reading skills.

Once you start using stop and jots, you will continue to find new purposes for them. Students can use them to jot down important moments as they are reading or connections they have made. I love printing questions or prompts on sticky notes and using them as formative assessment. They can be the quickest exit ticket that can be used with a whole group text, independent reading book or for book clubs.

I often use them to tie in with my reading units or teaching points for readers’ workshop.

I love using stop and jot prompts to teach different reading skills, such as theme, because it is an easy way to differentiate questions for students. I can really think about how students are developing with the skill and prompt them accordingly. It is a bit time consuming to print on sticky notes, but so worth it! It makes it easy to look back at their answers later too and understand their thinking. There are plenty of youtube videos and tutorials out there for how to print on sticky notes so give it a try!

You can read more ideas about how to teach theme here and grab these ready to print theme stickies above on my tpt store!

Why is independent reading important?

Independent reading activities for elementary students should be more focused on practicing reading skills WHILE reading and less focused on activities without reading. Students need more uninterrupted time to read, comprehend and think about what they have read. This will make them more proficient readers who are more engaged, have a better understanding and can talk about what they are reading.

There are many other independent reading activities out there, but I found great success in cutting back on reading worksheets and allowing more time for authentic reading. These reading independent activities have helped me tremendously to engage readers and I hope these ideas help you to do the same. 

Don’t forget to download these organization ideas to get started with a data driven classroom that makes taking and keeping anecdotal notes a part of your teaching practice so that you can become a more responsive teacher!