Building Reading Stamina – The Best Tools and Tips for Teachers
Building reading stamina is a key goal of literacy instruction, providing students with the ability to continue comprehending and making inferences while they read for extended periods of time. Here are some effective strategies and tools you can use to help your students work on building their reading endurance.
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What Is Reading Stamina?
Stamina is the ability to sustain prolonged physical or mental effort. The benefits of having reading stamina are tremendous, and helping your students to strengthen their stamina will help them for years to come.
I approach stamina with a growth mindset. Students need to know that they may not be able to sit and read for an entire 20 minutes, yet. The key word here is ‘yet’. And even though reading stamina is more of a personal goal, we work together to build our classroom reading stamina.
I love having classroom goals because students are so good at encouraging their peers to do their best.
Building Reading Stamina the Hard Way
So what happens when you don’t take the time to build reading stamina with your first graders?…
Well, as a first-year teacher, this is something that I struggled with. I knew that my students couldn’t jump right into 20-minute independent reading right away, but I still felt like they should be more independent than they were.
My students had a hard time staying in one place and were always coming to me to tell me they were done which interrupted my group at the teacher’s table.
Gradually my students became more independent but I still felt like I was missing something.
That’s when I realized that I was trying to run literacy centers the hard way. The truth was that I hadn’t taken the time to really talk to my students about what reading stamina is and why it is so important to our literacy center time.
Over the next few years, I made reading stamina a priority for my students and made sure to explain to them why building reading stamina is so important!
So Why is Reading Stamina so Important?
Our job as early educators is to foster a love of reading. And one of the best ways to do that is to cheer on our students while they are reading independently.
Some of your students may not be able to read the picture books in your library(most are written at a 4th-grade reading level) but that doesn’t mean they can’t learn things from picture books.
There are many ways to read a book, and looking at the wonderful illustrations in picture books is one of the ways. However, we need to build up student stamina so that they don’t flip through a book in a minute and think they are done just because they can’t read the words.
Building reading stamina will serve your students for a lifetime as they grow to love spending time with stories and pictures.
Decodables Texts
These books are based on a phonics skill or specific syllable type. The words in the text are typically 95% decodable with a few sight words. Decodable text allows a child to build their decoding skills until reading becomes automatic.
High-Quality Picture Books
Picture books are a great way to hold a child’s interest. There are many beautifully illustrated picture books out there. Children can comprehend what is happening in the story even if they can’t read all the words. I like to change out the picture books in my classroom library each month. The monthly books relate to the holidays of that month, or the main theme students are learning about.
Wordless Picture Books
I love wordless picture books because children can see what is happening in the story, but they can make up what the characters say. My students always have a lot of fun with these because they carefully look for details in the pictures to figure out what is happening.
High-Interest
Children can learn from books above their reading level. You’d be surprised how many of your students would love to look at encyclopedias or upper-grade textbooks!
The Best Tools and Tips for Building Reading Stamina
Action steps
- Introduce stamina- teach your students what the word stamina means. I like to think about running. If you wanted to run a marathon, 26.2 miles long, you would need to train yourself how to do that. You would start by running a few miles each day, and adding on miles as the days went on until your body built up the stamina to run a full 26.2 miles in one go.
Just like a runner who needs to practice running further and further, we need to strengthen our brains to read for longer and longer. We need to practice the different ways to read books so that our students can spend more time reading.
Three Ways to Read a Book
I have a poster in my room that is titled “Three Ways to Read a Book.”
The first way is to read the words.
The second is to read the pictures.
And the third is to retell a story.
You can foster a love for reading in your students when you make sure that they understand there is more than one way to read and be engaged with the text.
- Create class graph- Goal setting is a must for building reading stamina in your classroom. A good goal for a first grade classroom would be 15-20 minutes.
I model what stamina reading looks like- get started right away, eyes on my book, stay in one place, reading the whole time. I practice stamina reading with my students by setting a timer and making sure that they are on task. The first week that it is introduced we try reading for 3 minutes, then 5, then 10 and chart our progress as we go.
Every class is different, and it may take you longer to reach your goal. The most important thing to remember is to use positive reinforcement while working towards your goal.
Point out the good things that you saw while students were reading.
“I really liked how Luna picked one spot and stayed in it the whole time!”
“Ronin got out his books and started reading right away!”
Your students will work together to reach their reading stamina goal!
- Review expectations
It is so important to revisit your expectations of reading stamina every few weeks, especially after a long break/vacation.
I have found that there are times when we need a reset, and have often started a new reading stamina chart when we come back from winter break.
Make sure students have what they need to build reading stamina:
- Comfortable- Just like when your students pick a spot for center work, you will want to encourage them to find a place to sit that they will be comfortable in the whole time. In the beginning, students will need to try out a few places to figure out where they do their best work.
Do they like to sit at their desk or on the rug? Do they do their best work at the front of the room or closer to the windows?
- Choose their own books/ decodables- book bins
Letting students choose their own texts is a great way to motivate them to read for longer periods of time. Allowing them to select books related to topics they are interested in makes the reading process more meaningful and enjoyable. A diverse selection of reading materials should be available in your classroom, including both fiction and nonfiction books. Additionally, you can provide access to digital ebooks or audiobooks if appropriate.
Decodable readers are a great way for students to feel successful in their reading. These decodable readers focus on one phonics skill at a time with minimal sight words. Once students have worked on a decodable text with me for the week they get to put it in their book bin so that they can read it independently for another week.
- Minimal distractions- This goes along with making sure that students find a just right spot for reading. While students are working to build their reading stamina the classroom should be relatively distraction-free. Most of your students will be building their stamina during your literacy center rotations. Check out this post about running successful literacy centers in your classroom.
Check out these other great articles about how to build your students’ reading stamina
How To Teach Students to Build Reading Stamina: True Life I’m A Teacher
Never Have Boring Literacy Centers
Want to dive deeper into running and managing literacy centers? Check out How to Run Literacy Centers Like a Pro! It is the step-by-step guide you need to plan your groups, schedule literacy centers, and more! Grab your freebie here!!
Building reading stamina is the key to fostering a love of reading in your students. Remember to introduce reading stamina, create a class graph and review reading stamina expectations with your students.
Our job is to foster a love of reading in our young students, and we can achieve that through positive reinforcement and a group goal.
Happy reading!
