Easy Reading

In our Cunningham and Allington text, I found the concept of "mandating easy reading for everyone" (p. 50) very interesting. In the text, they made the point that most of what we read on a daily biases is much to easy for us and falls with in our independent reading level (understanding 98-99% of the words). They also discussed that the best readers in your classroom also spend most of their time reading text that is very easy for them. "Your best readers become fluent readers by reading and rereading lots of easy books." (p. 50) Children with lower reading skills, however, spend most of their time reading things that are on their instruction level (understanding 90% of the words and 75% of the content) or above their reading level. This can cause them to become easily discouraged and frustrated. Implementing mandated easy reading gives each child a chance to secede at reading without having to struggle though it. They are then more likely to find the joy in reading and as we all know; the more you read, the better you get, and then the more you want to read, etc. I hope to be able to have "mandated easy reading in my future classroom.