Solo Time – The best way to inculcate Reading Skills.

Solo Time – The best way to inculcate Reading Skills.

Reading is one of the four essential skills of learning a language; the remaining three are listening, writing and speaking (LSRW). Our language enrichment activities are planned and designed to inculcate all these four skills in students since their formative years.

CBSE has made Assessment of Speaking and Listening (ASL) as mandatory enrichment activity to be conducted twice an academic year in each of the language studied by the child during the course of study.

Despite of all our rigorous efforts, strategic planning, integrated blended lesson plans and day & night of hard work to improve & infuse these skills of language in our children, unfortunately somewhere we still lack to enhance reading skills effectively.

In my day today interaction with students, when I asked a student of grade 6 to read today’s news headlines in the assembly, he was so nervous. I thought maybe it is because of the stage fear the child could not read but for my curiosity when I asked the same child to read in my office as I just wanted to know the exact reason why the child could not read.

While reading he stammered and faltered over words and at last he said he can’t as he does not know how to pronounce many words. Further, when I approached children in the classroom, it was a real surprise to know that many students of even middle school could not read or stammered or took lot of time to recall words or faced difficulty in reading. That was the beginning for me to find and explore ways to inculcate reading skills and develop love for reading in students.

Every school has well equipped library with approximately more than 10,000 books but if we check the library books issuing record, it will be an opener for most of us to reveal that many books are not even issued by anyone since day it was purchased. I was amazed to know that even many of the teachers’ pages in the library book issuing record were empty.   

Reading is important as it develops our thoughts, sharpens our mind, enhance imagination, visualisation and writing skills. It expands the knowledge of vocabulary which further builds self esteem and self confidence.

Scientifically if we see, reading distresses and slowdowns the heart rate.  There are so many benefits of reading but the vital point is that reading should be an everyday occurrence.

At least read little for few minutes per day. There is a very common saying, “Read Everyday”, we all might have heard this from our parents and elders. Knowing that reading habit has tremendous benefits, every school must have a full proof reading activity plan to inculcate the habit of reading amongst the students.

Schools do organise wonderful reading activities which includes authors meet, Best reader’s award, read aloud, story- telling, library period etc. Such activities are short term as are conducted once or twice a year but in order to achieve best result for optimum learning, extensive plans are to be preferred. One of such plan is SOLO TIME.

SOLO TIME

Solo here refers to an individual and time refers to the time to be devoted by an individual for self. It is basically an independent reading approach. Solo time approach is inclined to our practical life. Most of the time we read alone & silently at all public places such as airport, restaurant etc. In examination hall, students are asked to read instructions and questions silently and independently.

This gives evidence that we love to adopt symmetry as by our nature we love to read alone as well as silently. Hence solo time reading activity will have surprisingly astonishing results in improving overall academic performance of students. Solo time activity needs minimum 5 minutes and maximum 10 minutes daily in the school time table.

This time is to be given to the children to read any text/book alone and silently. It is preferred to conduct solo time altogether for the whole school that there is a pin drop silence everywhere. This activity begins with a bell ring and ends with another bell ring. Solo time must be the time for everyone in the school including students, teachers, support staff, admin staff etc to drop everything and start reading (unless no medical or extreme emergency).

Teachers should to be involved because while seeing them reading, children will get constant encouragement, motivation and interest to read. At the end of solo time activity, five minutes if possible in time table to be given for the interaction between the students & the teacher. The teacher should ask few students like what is that one word you liked in your reading text, what would you like to share your text, what was the most interesting thing in text etc.

Reading solo and silently improve students’ understanding because it helps them to concentrate on what they are reading rather than the pronunciation of each word.  When we read we start visualising or start framing mental picture of the topic being discussed. When we encourage our students to read solo & silently, we need to help them develop the strategies they need for reading fast, with better comprehension and understanding. For instance if we take the first line of this paragraph my reading strategy would be to divide the sentence into small group of words and then read like Reading solo and silently/ improve students’ understanding/ because it helps them/ to concentrate on what/ they are reading/ rather than the/ pronunciation of each word. Teachers and parents can help children to practice such strategies and gradually the improvement in comprehension will be seen.

This approach will help students to read text with maximum attention, focus & concentration to meaning. Solo time also helps develop skills of reading for a purpose, as the focus is on understanding the content without the additional burden of having to pay attention to pronunciation.

It helps in making an unrestricted relationship with the book and the words for intimate knowledge. It helps students to absorb ideas into their subconscious and then use them in their daily lives.
Solo time is time to read relax fully without the fear that someone will point out your mistakes and peers will laugh at you. It also gives flexibility to re-read the text or words in case if you could not understood while reading once. Further, in case the children come across difficult words or new words in the reading text then by curiosity they will surely try to find out meaning and usage of the word either by checking in dictionary or by Google search. Psychologically, solo time for silent reading emboldened the reader because it placed the source of his/her curiosity completely under personal control. When personal control is achieved then the students get so deeply engrossed in reading that the small disturbances in the surrounding does not affect to their reading.   

To conclude, Solo time is an innovative unique reading activity to inculcate reading skills among students which further helps in concept learning as well as improve overall academic performance.