If given the choice, most children would prefer to be read to indefinitely. It seems easier, especially for early and struggling readers, and it’s engaging and restful. But the time comes for every child to really learn to read independently. I’m not just talking about decoding either. I’m talking about trying to read the likes of Shakespeare and the other Great Authors in one’s own head.

That requires a child to practice the virtue of silent reading. Put differently, he must learn to turn off the noises around him and listen to his own internal voice in conversation with an author.

Silent reading develops the habits of discipline and attention in a very different way than reading aloud. Whereas the latter grabs students in a more sensory, interactive, and energizing way, the former calls on students to be still within themselves.

That can be very hard, even for adults!

Depending on our mood, level of interest in a subject, or the things going on around us, it can be difficult to get into a silent reading rhythm. Here are several strategies that can help.

Classroom Culture

Classrooms should be the ideal place for students to get lost in a book, but that can be hard to facilitate. Not surprisingly, silent reading needs silence of mind and body, and just one restless student can upset the rhythm for an entire class. For that reason, it may be tempting to assign silent reading as homework and use class time for discussions.

I do that plenty of the time, but I still work silent reading into the school day. After all, there is no guaranteeing silent reading is even possible in a child’s home. I moderate it in small chunks at first—ten, fifteen minutes or so—and work up to longer sessions as the year progresses. With time and deliberate oversight, students become stakeholders in a silent reading culture, not least because it means less homework!

Teacher Prompted

Sometimes I want to say, “Okay, turn to chapter six and begin reading in silence.”

But that is not a good way to get a class going. It’s kind of like pushing a beginning swimmer into the deep end. He is so focused on not drowning that he can’t even think about how to use his arms and legs, let alone control his breath. Likewise, the reader pulls and grasps in his head, often drowning in the text before him.

Instead, I generally set up silent reading with some kind of prompt. Perhaps it’s a discussion about the previous chapter and how it positions the next.

Before having students read Act III of William Shakespeare’s King Lear, I might ask, ”Why do you think King Lear believed Regan and Goneril when they said they loved him?…Should their insincerity have been obvious?…Then why didn’t he pick up on it?”

In just a few minutes, students realize that King Lear’s mental state is in a bad way, and it’s about to get much worse. Then when they read Act III on their own, they are primed to recognize King Lear’s final descent into madness.

Other times, I assign a writing exercise that draws out important themes that a story will cover.

Before reading “The Marriage Set” from Geoffrey Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales I like to ask, “Who knows more about marriage, a person who has been married and divorced multiple times or someone who has studied about it in books?” The abstract people from the prompt take on form when students meet the Wife of Bath and the Clerk, two characters who sharply disagree in their views on marriage. Students must then “test” their preconceived notions against the story line.

Another favorite approach is to read the first several paragraphs aloud to the class with them reading along. This draws students into the story and prepares them to successfully finish it on their own. For more on this, return to my previous post on reading aloud.

Directed Reading

One way to aid student comprehension and prompt critical thinking is to give students writing assignments in conjunction with reading. I favor narration exercises, reading guides, and journal entries, though there are many ways teachers can accomplish this.

Reading Guides

Reading guides are teacher-generated questions about the text. If my class is reading a novel, I have a reading guide for each chapter. If we are reading a play, then I might have one for each act or scene. In either case, I write my questions in chronological order, so students can read and answer questions more or less simultaneously. I like this model the best for middle school students because it keys them in to the important details and ideas in the reading.

Here is an example of a reading guide I designed in conjunction with Saint Benedict: The Story of the Father of Western Monks by Mary Fabian Windeatt. Although it’s not considered a Great Book, it is beautifully written and enriches my classical curriculum as a whole. Students read this book entirely on their own. My reading objective in this case is to help students improve their reading comprehension while learning about a great medieval saint. For that reason, a reading guide is ideal.

Narration Exercises

The Latin root narr means “tell,” which is not surprising when one thinks about words like narrator and narrative. Likewise, narration exercises are designed to teach students how to re-tell a story, which is a wonderful way to check their comprehension after reading something. Narrations can be done verbally, but I prefer having students complete them in writing as the end product tends to be more thoughtful and well-planned.

Narrations are somewhat similar to summaries, but they have more of a story voice. Instead of just stringing together sentences that present details from the original story in chronological order, students are encouraged to make the narration exciting and suspenseful. Students may stick with the narrative perspective, but they may also choose to tell the story differently, which can be very fun to read aloud to classmates.

This narration example was completed by a small group of students in connection with reading the story of Genseric the Vandal in Heroes of the Middle Ages by Eva March Tappan. Though also not a Great Book, the stories Tappan tells are beautifully written and historical by design.

Journal Entries

For journal entries, I write deeper, more analytically focused questions that address a central Truth or major theme at play. In response, students end up writing mini-theses about each chapter.

This is a more challenging assignment for students than reading guides and narrations because it requires higher level thinking in addition to basic comprehension and creative writing. Students must synthesize a number of details in the text and develop their own ideas. Moreover, journal entries are open-ended in the sense that students write as much or as little as necessary to answer the questions in a logical, evidence-based, persuasive way.

Here is an example of a journal entry based on questions I designed for Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc by Mark Twain. Unlike the two aforementioned examples, Mark Twain’s book falls squarely in the Great Book genre and demands a higher level of reading.

Informal Assessment

Silent reading provides invaluable insight into students’ reading habits. I may sit at my desk and discreetly “watch” students, or I may walk around and openly “monitor” them. In either case, I am constantly assessing how students read. While I may not be able to hear the mental process going on in a child’s head during silent reading, I can determine much from his body language or just tracking how quickly he turns the page.

“No wonder so-and-so’s journal entries are sparse. He’s reading too fast to absorb much,” I might observe. Or, “I wonder why so-and-so is having so much trouble reading today. He keeps looking around. Better have a chat with him.”

Collectively, these strategies help students develop the virtue of silent reading. I always remind students they will be working on this virtue their entire life, and I make sure to let them know my first reading of each of the works we study together was difficult, too. It’s only through continued work on the same texts that I have learned what I know, and I get more out the books each time I read them. They will, too.