I am a huge fan of SSR, especially in 9th grade. In fact, I spend the first 8-15 minutes of class EVERY DAY on SSR. The only exceptions to this rule are Assessment Days and Half Days. Part of the problem that I ran into last year for this was accountability.
I had a quarterly project, which worked fine, but I often felt like students would waste the actual class time and just cram the project in the night before it was due. Typical. To try to combat this, I had a daily reading log, where students would record the title and pages read in one column and give a brief response in the other.
Sounds great in theory, but here are some of the most typical responses I would get:
- This book was ok today.
- I don't really like this book.
- This book seems really cool.
I had to change it up for this year. I wanted something that couldn't faked as easily - and even if a student just did each activity based on something they read in class, it would still be beneficial. I found this elementary Weekly Reading Log on Pinterest and adapted it for my secondary classroom.
Here are the results:
They turned in the first log today - I haven't graded them yet, but from a couple glances, they look pretty promising!