Hi fellow WL teachers! I’ve been horrible at fulfilling my resolution to blog more – oops. Perhaps I just need to remind myself that not every blog post needs to be perfection. So here I am taking just a few minutes to let you all know how I implement FVR (Free Voluntary Reading) in my Spanish classes. To my students, it’s called Lectura libre.

Spanish 1: I don’t. Students don’t have enough language yet to be independent readers and I don’t want to put them in a situation where they struggle and are frustrated with reading when we’ve barely begun.

Spanish 2: The 2nd week of Spanish 2, students get to look around at my classroom library and create their own “Book Interests Inventory” based on their interests.
Then, we read for 3-7 minutes every Tuesday and Thursday, and students fill out an easy & basic form from Mis Clases Locas. FVR is not graded in my Spanish 2 class.

Heritage Spanish: The first week of school, students complete the same Book Inventory that I mentioned above.
Then, we read every day, starting at 5 minutes but gradually increasing until we are typically reading 10-15 minutes. In Heritage Spanish 2, if I can manage it, I may even let them read 20 minutes. Students fill out this Book Log I got from Mike Peto and I mark it as a reading grade.

New for me this year:

Book Talks with Spanish 2 – as a class I ask simple questions about their books, kind of in the style of Persona especial. I’m just trying it out this week so I may do a blog post about it later 🙂

Conferences with Heritage Spanish – A lot of teachers say that we should model reading for our students by reading our own book while they read. I talked to my literacy coach about this because it sounded good but I couldn’t help but wonder — does that really work??? My literacy coach said there was a lack of evidence and research surrounding teachers silently reading in front of students as a model, and that instead, talking to students about what I’m reading AND what they are reading is the best way to model how much I value reading. So I conference with 2 students during Lectura libre each day and we discuss both of our books. Each week I have a different theme – last week it was “Characters” and so our discussion was framed around the characters in our free reading books. These discussions are entirely in Spanish, informal, and not graded.