Ten Minutes a Day for Silent Reading

Rachel is asking to leave the room again. She asks often. She doesn't want a drink of water or a trip to the restroom. She wants to go to the library to check out a new book for our silent reading program. Even though we only read for 10 minutes a day in class, Rachel finishes several books each week, and I'm frequently writing library passes for her.

Classrooms in the United States have had sustained silent reading programs for more than 25 years. Proposed by Lyman Hunt at the University of Vermont in the 1960s, sustained silent reading programs became popular in the 1970s. I became interested in these programs in 1978 when I realized that many students couldn't tell me when they had last finished reading a book. They blamed their inability to finish a book on a lack of leisure time and on their belief that most books were boring.