Sustained Silent Reading (SSR)

Abstract

Sustained silent reading (SSR) is an instructional approach that was first developed in the 1960s. It usually involves students in class being given a block of time in which everyone in the class sits quietly and reads a book of his or her own choosing. Sustained silent reading usually occurs during a student’s English class period, but in some settings SSR is instead implemented on a school-wide basis, so that all students in the school perform their SSR at a set time during the day. The purpose is to foster the habit of reading for pleasure.

Overview

Beginning in the 1960s, educational researchers and social scientists became aware of a disturbing trend. Fewer and fewer people reported that they enjoyed reading for pleasure on a regular basis, and even those that did reported spending less time reading with the passing of each year. Many blamed these developments on the rising popularity of television, movies, and other forms of entertainment (Trelease, 2013). Whatever the cause, the shift was distressing because numerous studies suggested that reading for pleasure is a strong predictor of academic success, professional accomplishment later in life, and overall satisfaction with one’s life. In an attempt at reversing the dangerous pull away from reading, researchers began to explore various methods by which reading could be encouraged in young people, in the hope that doing this would help them to develop the habit of reading and that this habit would remain with them throughout their lives. One such literacy initiative was called sustained silent reading (SSR) (Schoenbach, Greenleaf, & Murphy, 2012).

SSR is a simple enough concept, so much so that it is almost surprising that it was recommended by sophisticated researchers as a means of addressing a complex issue. It is based on the idea that if students are told to read something they enjoy—anything, from a comic book to a romance novel to Beowulf—for predetermined block of time repeated each day, then reading will be more likely to become a habit for those students. Furthermore, the theory is that once the act of reading becomes a habit, students will be less likely to fight against it, either verbally or internally, and will, over time, come to realize that it is actually an enjoyable respite from the demands of everyday life, and one that expands their intellectual horizons by allowing them to experience times and places they might otherwise never know.

SSR is attractive in part because it is relatively inexpensive to implement. Since students are allowed to read whatever they like (within reason), they are encouraged to bring their own books from home to read during SSR. Although the sad fact is that many students do not have their own books at home to read, and cannot afford to buy any, most schools address this problem by connecting the SSR program to an introduction to the school and/or community’s library services. This usually takes the form of a library tour and a brief explanation of how to find reading materials on various subjects in the library. In this way, all students to have access to quality reading materials related to topics they find interesting (Hiebert & Reutzel, 2010). Various SSR programs are available for schools, many with humorous acronyms like Sustained Quiet Uninterrupted Reading Time (SQUIRT), and Daily Independent Reading Time (DIRT).

Applications

Once students are all equipped with their reading material of choice, SSR can be implemented in a number of different ways. The most common approach is to devote a portion of students’ daily English class to SSR; since literacy instruction and reading comprehension fall under the umbrella of English, many schools find that it makes the most sense to implement SSR there; doing so also avoids complaints from teachers of other subjects that SSR is eating into their instructional time with students. SSR will often be the first order of business in English class, typically occupying the first fifteen or twenty minutes of class time (Farwell & Teger, 2012).

The reading is silent because each person is supposed to be able to concentrate fully on his or her reading, so no talking is allowed. The reading is sustained because it happens for a meaningful length of time. Reading for periods of less than ten minutes at a time generally does not provide a long enough opportunity for students to get into the task and fully engage with the story. It is important that SSR is done on a regular basis for the reading habit to take root. Most sustained silent reading advocates suggest that the time be taken each day, although in some programs this is altered so that students have SSR once per week. When SSR is offered on a weekly basis, it tends to be for a longer session, so that it might take up an entire class period (Tompkins, 2013).

The Developmental Reading Assessment is a tool used by some schools in an effort to gauge how effective the school’s efforts at SSR are. Its questions focus not only on changes in reading comprehension, but also on how engaged students are in their reading. Student responses are compared against a rubric and rated as belonging to one of four categories: intervention, instructional, independent, and advanced.

Viewpoints

Like almost any instructional approach, SSR has had its share of criticism. Most who are skeptical of the program agree that it is very unlikely to be harmful to students’ academic achievement. The main argument against SSR tends to be that there is insufficient evidence that it achieves any significant benefit. Critics observe that some SSR programs appear to have little in common with traditional instruction and appear to be little more than an in-class rest period for teachers. The feeling among this contingent is that SSR is a waste of time that could be better spent on providing students with actual instruction or other, more hands-on learning activities. The National Reading Panel, a research body created by the U.S. Congress in 1997, found that the benefits of SSR are negligible (Sanden, 2014). Both those for and against SSR often rely on findings from the National Assessment of Educational Progress to bolster their arguments in the SSR debate.

Some critics also object to the freedom permitted by SSR for students to select their own reading material (File, Mueller, & Wisneski, 2012). These objections tend to be based on a fear that students will select reading material that is insufficiently challenging or intellectually rewarding enough to justify the time being spent on it (e.g., magazines, comic books, or YA genre novels). Other objections have been raised by parents and community members who are unhappy with some of the books available in school and community libraries. They do not want their children to have access to such materials, either for religious or philosophical reasons, and they are concerned that the openness of SSR programs may allow their children to "waste" time reading these materials (McKeown & Kucan, 2010).

Proponents of SSR respond to these concerns in a number of ways. Controversies over "bad" books often expand to include library staff and implicate issues of intellectual freedom, because while no one disputes a parent’s right to limit what kinds of reading material his or her children are permitted to have access to, in a school setting it is difficult to limit one child’s access without impinging on everyone else’s access to the same material. Still, within the school it is usually possible to work out arrangements to limit the access of students whose parents are concerned about specific types of reading material (Clay, 2014).

The objections regarding the usefulness of SSR can be more challenging to address, because they tend to be based on parent and community assumptions about what the purpose of schools is, what it should be, and what kind of intellectual life is desirable in society.

Teachers are often put in the position of trying to explain the lifelong value of reading to parents who do not themselves value it. This can be an uphill battle, to say the least. While some can be persuaded that instilling an enduring love of reading is valuable for practical reasons, because it increases students’ reading comprehension and vocabulary (skills that are beneficial across virtually all disciplines, from chemistry to culinary arts and from history to fine arts), there are those who simply do not find reading and its benefits of any interest. On the other hand, those who are in this camp typically see little value in any area of education, so it is not as though they are targeting SSR or literacy instruction in general for special scrutiny (Shanahan & Lonigan, 2013).

Despite the various forms of criticism that have been directed at SSR over the years, support for the program among educators remains strong (Daisey, 2012), as does faith in its ability to help students not only prepare for the practical demands of their careers in later life, but also help them develop the kind of intellectual vitality that will sustain them through difficult times (Ladbrook, 2015). Many of SSR’s benefits are intangible or at least very difficult to quantify. This is part of the reason why the practice has been criticized, because it is not always possible to speak with a student and ask him or her to point out specific benefits derived directly from SSR. However, just because the benefits of SSR tend to be intangible, this does not mean that they are any less potent. If a child spends time in SSR on a story about a character who is able to defy adversity and the child is able to internalize even a small part of this character’s strength and draw upon it later in life to help cope with real life difficulties, then who can say whether the time spent on sustained silent reading was wasted? (Katz, 2013)

Terms & Concepts

Developmental Reading Assessment: The Developmental Reading Assessment is a tool used by some schools in an effort to gauge how effective the school’s efforts at SSR are. Its questions focus not only on changes in reading comprehension, but also on how engaged students are in their reading. Student responses are compared against a rubric and rated as belonging to one of four categories: intervention, instructional, independent, and advanced. The goal is for SSR and other forms of literacy instruction to bring students into the independent or advanced categories.

Drop Everything and Read (DEAR): SSR programs go by many different names, depending on the school setting and to some degree on the teaching philosophy underlying the school’s implementation of the SSR program. DEAR is often used by schools that seek to emphasize the importance of reading to success in other academic areas, showing that it is an activity worth setting aside all other pursuits. Other SSR programs include Free Reading Time, Sustained Quiet Uninterrupted Reading Time (SQUIRT), and Daily Independent Reading Time (DIRT). Many of the names try to incorporate humor, to make them easier to remember and to appeal to youth.

Leisure Reading: Leisure reading, also known as reading for pleasure, is reading that is done outside of the school setting, and that is not required by any outside authority; it is not part of a school curriculum, nor is it part of one’s job responsibilities. Rather, leisure reading’s only purpose is entertainment and edification. Part of the goal of SSR programs is to try to help students build up a habit of independent reading, as studies have shown that the more people read for pleasure, the greater is their reading comprehension and vocabulary. Both of these factors have been tied to success in one’s professional and personal life.

National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP): The National Assessment of Educational Progress is a testing program conducted periodically to monitor how well students are performing in different subjects, such as reading, math, geography, arts, and sciences. The NAEP is administered by the Department of Education, and the data it gathers make it possible to track achievement for different groups and regions in the United States. Those for and against SSR often rely on findings from the NAEP to bolster their arguments in the SSR debate.

National Reading Panel (NRP): The National Reading Panel was a research body created by the United States Congress in 1997 to study ways to improve the reading scores being achieved by students nationwide. The NRP examined several different instructional approaches and reading curricula in an effort to find out what was working and what was not. Its findings regarding SSR suggested that the benefits of SSR are negligible, but the research methods used by the panel have been widely criticized as inadequate and poorly monitored.

Scientifically Based Reading Research (SBRR): Scientifically based reading research has become one of the requirements for any research into the effectiveness of SSR. Just as in other areas of government, society has begun to expect that government funding of any program or activity must be justified by evidence based research—that is, there must be data showing that an intervention is effective at solving a particular problem before that intervention will be financially supported. Reading programs are therefore expected to be based on rigorous research demonstrating that they have a tangible benefit on students’ ability to read as well as on their attitudes toward reading.

Value of Reading: The value of reading is the degree to which people look on reading as an enjoyable activity in which they voluntarily participate, or as a chore they undertake because they are forced to, either by their teachers or by their parents. With the passage of time, fewer and fewer people surveyed have responded that they value reading and enjoy it. This has been a major motivator in the implementation of SSR programs, because research shows that people who do value reading and who read regularly for pleasure tend to have higher educational attainment, higher incomes, and greater life satisfaction across many areas.

Bibliography

Clay, M. M. (2014). By different paths to common outcomes: Literacy learning and teaching. Auckland, NZ: Global Educations Systems.

Daisey, P. (2012). Secondary preservice teachers’ beliefs and experiences toward sustained silent reading (SSR) in a content area literacy course. College Reading Association Yearbook, 35, 275–293. Retrieved January 12, 2016 from EBSCO Online Database Education Research Complete. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=ehh&AN=108933788&site=ehost-live

Farwell, S. M., & Teger, N. L. (2012). Supporting reading in grades 6-12: A guide. Santa Barbara, CA: Libraries Unlimited.

File, N., Mueller, J. J., & Wisneski, D. B. (2012). Curriculum in early childhood education: Re-examined, rediscovered, renewed. New York, NY: Routledge.

Hiebert, E. H., & Reutzel, D. R. (2010). Revisiting silent reading: New directions for teachers and researchers. Newark, DE: International Reading Association.

Katz, M.-L. (2013). Moving ideas: Multimodality and embodied learning in communities and schools. New York, NY: Peter Lang.

Ladbrook, J. (2014). Sustained silent reading (SSR): What does the research say?. English in Aotearoa, (84), 58–70. Retrieved January 12, 2016 from EBSCO Online Database Education Research Complete. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=ehh&AN=99628867&site=ehost-live

McKeown, M. G., & Kucan, L. (2010). Bringing reading research to life. New York, NY: Guilford Press.

Sanden, S. (2014). Out of the shadow of SSR: Real teachers’ classroom independent reading practices. Language Arts, 91(3), 161–175. Retrieved January 12, 2016 from EBSCO Online Database Education Research Complete. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=ehh&AN=93985989&site=ehost-live

Schoenbach, R., Greenleaf, C., & Murphy, L. (2012). Reading for understanding: How reading apprenticeship improves disciplinary learning in secondary and college classrooms. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.

Shanahan, T., & Lonigan, C. J. (2013). Early childhood literacy: The National Early Literacy Panel and beyond. Baltimore, MD: Paul H. Brookes.

Tompkins, G. E. (2013). 50 literacy strategies: Step by step. Boston, MA: Pearson.

Trelease, J. (2013). The read-aloud handbook. New York: Penguin Books.

Suggested Reading

Blythe, H. I., Pagán, A., & Dodd, M. (2015). Beyond decoding: Phonological processing during silent reading in beginning readers. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 41(4), 1244–1252. Retrieved January 12, 2016 from EBSCO Online Database Education Research Complete. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=ehh&AN=108308141&site=ehost-live

Gagliano, A., Ciuffo, M., Ingrassia, M., Ghidoni, E., Angelini, D., Benedetto, L., & ... Stella, G. (2015). Silent reading fluency: Implications for the assessment of adults with developmental dyslexia. Journal of Clinical and Experimental Neuropsychology, 37(9), 972–980.

Mostow, J., Nelson-Taylor, J., & Beck, J. E. (2013). Computer-guided oral reading versus independent practice: Comparison of sustained silent reading to an automated reading tutor that listens. Journal of Educational Computing Research, 49(2), 249–276. Retrieved January 12, 2016 from EBSCO Online Database Education Research Complete. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=ehh&AN=91913539&site=ehost-live

Reutzel, D. R., & Juth, S. (2014). Supporting the development of silent reading fluency: An evidence-based framework for the intermediate grades (3–6). International Electronic Journal of Elementary Education, 7(1), 27–46. Retrieved January 12, 2016 from EBSCO Online Database Education Research Complete. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=ehh&AN=108891631&site=ehost-live