Get Your World Language Students Reading with a Free Voluntary Reading Practice!
Free Voluntary Reading, also sometimes called Sustained Silent Reading, is a practice in which students select comprehensible input (CI) novels and other reading materials from your classroom library and read silently for a given period of time. I have successfully implemented a weekly Free Voluntary Reading (FVR) practice for over three years, and I can honestly say that it has been a tremendous help in terms of building student comprehension and fluency skills.
In this blog post, I’m going to share some of the research supporting the benefits of implementing a recreational reading practice in your French, Spanish, or Italian classes, share some practical tips for how you can implement a FVR program (including how to acquire reading materials!), and share some tips, strategies, and resources that you might find helpful as you embark on this exciting literary journey in your World Language classes!
Why start a Classroom Library & Free Voluntary Reading Practice?
The research in second language acquisition is overwhelmingly clear that students require loads of comprehensible input in order to acquire language in a sustained and meaningful way. Comprehensible input is essentially written or spoken messages that are just a bit more difficult than what students can comfortably understand, in which compelling content is communicated and in which students are able to demonstrate understanding and interpret meaning.
By creating a classroom library of level-appropriate reading material and implementing a Free Voluntary Reading practice in your instructional routine, you are giving students the opportunity to acquire massive amounts of vocabulary, high-frequency grammatical structures, and perhaps most importantly: you are conveying to them that they are capable of reading and understanding the target language. Nothing builds confidence quite like a daily or weekly reading practice.
Research done by Dr. Stephen Krashen supports the notion that sustained silent reading helps support students’ literacy development and overall World Language competence in the target language. If you’re interested in diving deeper into the research literature, feel free to check out this brief article by Dr. Krashen.
In my own classroom, I find that my students tend to retain more vocabulary and high-frequency verbs thanks to our FVR practice. I see FVR as being a sort of “glue” that binds language in students’ minds. I see many benefits, but here are two that I always brag about to my World Language colleagues:
Students see the language that we are studying in our curriculum being reflected organically in the stories they’re reading. This helps increase student buy-in: they’re learning language in order to USE IT for a productive purpose. They see the value in the language they’re learning because they are being provided with opportunities to see language being used naturally and for a specific purpose.
Students will at times blow me away with the language they’re able to produce (either via in-class discussions or through their writing). I’ll often ask students, “Whoa, where did you pick up that word?” or “How do you know what that expression means?” They’ll respond, “I read it in a book during FVR time.”
How to Get Started: Creating a Classroom Library
In order to get started, you need to first think about how you will acquire reading materials for your students. This is the most important step, because one of the cornerstones of any successful FVR program is that you must provide students with ample reading material that speaks to their diverse interests. Remember, your students are choosing what they want to read—which is where this practice gets most of its power, in my opinion… we know that student agency almost always leads to more positive learning outcomes—and if your selection is not vast enough, there simply won’t be student buy-in.
Remember, you’re asking students to do something that many of them wouldn’t naturally want to do: you’re asking them to read for a couple minutes in the target language. This is like getting kids to eat broccoli or spinach. It’s an uphill battle, which is why many parents need to come up with creative ways to sneak veggies into their kids’ meals. By increasing the diversity of reading materials, you’re increasing the chances students will find something interesting and pleasurable to read.
If you’ve got money in your yearly teaching budget, consider buying CI novels/readers for your classes. Here are a couple sites that you could look into. (Note: I have not vetted all of these, so you’ll need to do your own research before purchasing.)
These books can be incredibly expensive, so consider your classroom library as a “growing project.” I would not recommend spending your own money on classroom books, but of course doing so would allow you to grow your library more quickly. (For a few years, I used all of the Amazon gift cards that students gifted me for Christmas and at the end of the school year and purchased more books for my library.)
If you do not have the financial resources to buy CI novels for your students, here are a few inexpensive options you may want to consider:
Create a few of your own stories, and add them to the library. Consider repurposing CI/TPRS lessons that you already use - change around the characters, setting, main problem, etc. so that students get a “fresh experience” reading the new version of the story.
Have your students create stories as an assigned project. Have them write, edit, and illustrate their stories and present them in a “readable” format (i.e. printed story, hand-crafted storybook, etc.).
If you do any type of story-asking or collaborative storytelling activities as part of your repertoire of comprehension-based activities, consider converting these stories into mini-books that you keep in your library.
Try googling “free stories for novice learners of _____.” You’d be surprised by the volume of free reading material out there for novice language learners.
See if your media center orders any language magazines. My district orders Scholastic magazines in French, Spanish, and German. I always ask our media center specialist to pass along all of the old issues of magazines that she would otherwise throw out.
Implementing a Free Voluntary Reading Practice
Once you have a classroom library—and by the way, your classroom library will continue to grow and evolve year after year… I’d rather you start your FVR practice with a small, humble library than not start it at all—you’re ready to think about how you’re going to implement FVR into your French, Spanish, or Italian classes! I have a few things I want you to consider:
Consider frequency. How often will your students participate in FVR? I think the answer to this question depends on a host of factors, including student age, level, proficiency, and amount of class time you can realistically devote to an FVR practice. I have my 7th and 8th graders read at least once a week, but I know teachers who truly believe that FVR is magical, and they may have their students read a couple times a week or even every class. Some teachers start their classes off with FVR as a sort of bellringer - students enter class, grab their books, and get started with their reading. Find what works for you.
Consider duration. For how long will your students read? I start off small at the beginning of the year - students read for just 5 minutes. We work our way up to 10 minutes, and that’s where we stay for the rest of the year. I don’t want to overwhelm my students with too much reading time, so I’ve found 10 minutes to be the sweet spot for me, but you’ll want to experiment.
Consider routine. Where does FVR fall in your instructional routine? Will you do it at the beginning of class? At the end of class? Sometime in the middle as a sort of “brain break”? Will you do it every Friday? Before or after an assessment? So many options here, but I do recommend that you have a consistent routine so that students know what to expect.
Consider post-reading activities. FVR purists will say that you shouldn’t tie any sort of post-reading activities or assessments to FVR, because you want to make FVR feel as unacademic as possible—kind of like pleasure reading, rather than academic reading for your LA or Social Studies class. I, however, have found that sometimes I need to implement short activities (randomly and unannounced) so that students know that this is not 10 minutes of free time, or 10 minutes for them to daydream and stare into the abyss. Sometimes, I will hand students an index card after their 10-minute FVR session and ask them to write 3 things that happened in the pages they read, 2 words that they saw in the text, and 1 rating of the book they’ve been reading (out of 5 stars). I’ll collect their index cards for a quick 5-point participation grade. This sort of post-reading activity helps keep students accountable—this is not free time.
My classroom library (to the left) during Year 2 of FVR — it has grown considerably since then! My students engaging in their weekly FVR practice (to the right).
One more thing… you’ll want to have a set of “Reading Rules & Expectations” that you’ll have students abide by during FVR time. Be clear about what students can and cannot do during FVR time, and what your overall expectations are for them. Here are mine:
1. Walk up to the classroom library and pick up your book quietly. Go back to your seat and begin reading. There is no talking during the 10 minutes of FVR.
2. You must read the book you have selected for the entire duration of the FVR period. If you are not loving the book you have selected, you may swap it out for a different one next class.
3. Once the 10 minutes are up, put your book back in the library where you found it. It is our collective responsibility to maintain the organization of our classroom library.
FVR Tips, Tricks, and Resources!
The way I implement FVR has grown and evolved over the years, but at this point I’ve been doing it long enough to share some tips and resources with you to help you implement this practice a bit more smoothly:
Introduce and talk about the books in your library! At the start of the year, consider doing a Book Chat activity, in which you talk about some of the main books in your library. I do this in the target language: I show students the cover, describe the synopsis in basic language, and then in English I tell them who among them might like each particular book the most. (e.g. “This book is a mystery, so if you’re into detective novels or thrillers, this book would be great for you!” Or… "This book tends to be on the easier side, so if you’re looking for a book to help review vocabulary/grammar from last year and to build your confidence, I’d recommend this one!”)
Pick up multiple copies of the same book. Over the years, you’ll get a sense of which books your students gravitate toward the most. I like to have at least 7 or 8 copies of those “hot picks.” For books that I am experimenting with, I’ll usually pick up two or three copies to gauge student response.
Read each book before it goes in your library! So important. You want to vet each book before it goes in your library. Make sure that the book is level-appropriate (linguistically speaking). Make sure it is culturally responsive. Make sure it’s interesting! If you find a book to be utterly boring, chances are your students will as well.
Give your students a Reading Log to keep track of their books. If you do FVR once or twice a week, your students will have trouble remembering which book they were reading last time and what page they were on. And seeing as I only have one library and five different classes that use it, I don’t allow students to “sign out” books. I’ve seen some teachers use color-coded bookmarks for each of their classes, but I think this just creates too much of a hassle. To help my students remember what they were reading last time, I distribute a Reading Log that I have them place in their French binder. At the end of each FVR session, they write what page they left off at, so they will be able to know which book to choose next time and where to start.
Interested in my Reading Log? CLICK HERE to access my Google Doc. Simply go to File —> Make a Copy to edit it for your own classroom use!
Tell your students NOT to look up every word! Most of these readers come with glossaries at the back of the book—which is great, of course—but it’s very cumbersome and fatiguing to have to go to the back of the book to look up a new word every 20 seconds. I tell my students that they should only look up words that they’ve seen before and “should” already know, or words that constantly recur, as these are high-frequency words that they ought to know. Just as they don’t read beside a dictionary in English, they shouldn’t be looking up every unknown word, as this diminishes the pleasure of reading.
Don’t take it personally if your students don’t LOVE this practice. Hot take: sometimes students don’t know what’s best for them. We, as the professionals in the room, often do! Over the years, I’ve had some students who groaned every time I announced it’s reading time, and that’s okay. Learning a new language is hard work. This is not always a “fun” practice, and it’s definitely cognitively and linguistically demanding… As the professional in the room, I know from the research and from my own experience that my students will improve if they do FVR faithfully and consistently. So if you have a few students who roll their eyes when you announce it’s time to read, just know that those students also roll their eyes in LA class when their English teachers tell them it’s time to take out their books and read. Some kids don’t love reading (regardless of the language), and that’s okay. This is still a worthwhile practice that you’ll expect them to participate in seriously.
I hope this post has helped inspire you to begin a classroom library and silent reading practice in your World Language classes! If you already do FVR, I hope you’ve gleaned some ideas that might make your practice go a bit more smoothly. I’ve seen tremendous success with it over the years, and I’m sure you will, too! If you’re interested in learning more, or if you have any specific questions for me, you can always reach out to me at michael@worldlanguageresources.com. I’d be more than happy to help!
Happy language teaching,
~ Michael
