“I’m just not a reader!”
“I hate reading!”
“Reading is boring!”
As literacy teachers, we’ve all heard these phrases from students. And there are a range of reasons why so many students resist reading: lack of confidence, lack of personal interest, lack of foundational skills, lack of stamina, and more.
The complexity behind why students avoid reading requires our solutions to be equally complex and responsive. Our facilitation of students’ reading experiences must be thoughtful, intentional, and aligned with broader literacy goals.
Perhaps the most transformative way to shift students’ attitudes toward and experiences with reading is through independent reading. But this doesn’t simply mean that we ask students to grab a random book off our shelves and read (or sometimes even pretend to read!) once a week. For independent reading to be truly impactful, it needs to be purposefully curated, consistently facilitated, and carefully structured around choice.
In this final blog post in our Literacy That Matters series, we’ll dig into the research behind independent reading and share practical, easy-to-implement strategies to integrate independent reading into your literacy classrooms.
If you missed the other blogs in our Literacy That Matters series, be sure to check them out: Making Reading Relevant: Why Students Need to See Themselves in What They Read
How Keeping the Bar Elevated Can Motivate and Engage Students in Literacy Classrooms
Why Pop Culture Belongs in Literacy Classrooms
What the Research Says About Independent Reading
We are witnessing a rapid decline in reading for pleasure. Just 14% of thirteen-year-olds reported reading daily for fun in 2023, which is a 27% decrease from 2012. [1] With fewer and fewer children reading, critical skills associated with consistent reading—comprehension, vocabulary knowledge, critical thinking, etc.—are also suffering.
Literacy teachers are uniquely positioned to combat this widespread problem by promoting and facilitating independent reading for pleasure.
When we increase independent reading, research shows that the impacts are tremendous:
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Pleasure reading improves students’ reading achievement scores. [2]
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Independent reading improves students’ vocabulary, spelling, grammar, and reading comprehension. [3]
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Increases in reading frequency lead to increases in reading motivation. [4]
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Pleasure reading in school-aged children is associated with an increased likelihood of healthier behaviors. [5]
It’s clear that independent reading benefits kids in and out of the classroom, but how can literacy teachers meaningfully integrate such practices into their classrooms, especially when teachers are already overburdened by daily demands?
Here are some practical strategies you can use to incorporate independent reading into your classrooms.
Practical Strategies to Integrate Independent Reading
Strategy 1: Protect Time for Reading
Time is precious in our classrooms. Between pacing guides, district assessments, and those unexpected fire drills, teachers are always running out of time. This is why practices like independent reading can understandably get placed on the back burner.
However, for independent reading to have a real impact on students’ reading lives and literacy skills, it needs to be consistent. Luckily, this doesn’t have to come at the expense of other instructional goals; rather, independent reading can be designed to complement existing academic goals.
Here are some ways to achieve this:
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Set a clear independent reading schedule: Whether it’s 15 minutes twice a week or 10 minutes three times a week, establish a goal and stick with it.
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Use this time creatively: Consider how this time can be folded into existing classroom practices. For example, if you conference with students 1:1, pull students during independent reading time to participate in their conferences.
Strategy 2: Build Choice Within Clear Parameters
Independent reading is most successful when it’s grounded in choice. Students can’t establish identities as readers if they don’t have freedom to explore their literary interests. Unstructured freedom, however, especially for students who don’t normally read, can be overwhelming and counterproductive.
To balance choice and structure, you might consider the following ideas:
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Curate around students’ interests: Try to build your classroom library with books that align with students’ interests and identities. Not sure where to start? Use our Student Reader Survey to help guide your process!
Pro-tip: If funding is a concern for building a classroom library, consider trying to
establish partnerships with local libraries, organizations, or businesses for donation!
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Choice by genre/topic: Think about how to offer choice to align with current instructional goals. If you’re working in a unit focused on informational texts, allow students choice to read other informational texts. If you’re working in a unit centered on technology, give students the choice to read other texts about a similar topic.
Notes on student surveys:
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Make sure to check your district and state policies around student surveys.
Strategy 3: Integrate Independent Reading into Curriculum
Independent reading is most powerful when it’s not siloed from the rest of instruction. When students can make connections between their choice reading and what they’re studying in class, reading feels purposeful rather than peripheral.
One way to do this is to intentionally align independent reading with the skills, concepts, or big ideas students are exploring in your core literacy curriculum. For example, if your unit centers on theme, you can invite students to track and discuss themes in their independent reading books. If your class is focused on author’s craft, students might look for examples of imagery, characterization, or structure in their choice texts.
These kinds of connections allow independent reading to reinforce core literacy skills without turning it into another assignment. Students still experience autonomy and choice, but their reading also becomes a meaningful extension of classroom learning.
Strategy 4: Make Reading Social
It’s important for literacy classrooms to promote a culture of reading. When reading is embedded in the classroom community, it becomes more motivating and meaningful. Making independent reading social helps normalize different reading experiences and allows students to learn from one another as readers.
Here are some options for making reading social:
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Small-group reading check-ins: Periodically place students in small groups to talk about what they’re reading, what’s interesting or confusing, and what’s keeping them engaged. These conversations don’t need to be formal: brief, low-stakes discussions can go a long way.
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Informal book talks: Invite students to briefly share a book they’re reading (whether they love it or hate it!). Hearing peers talk about books expands students’ awareness of different genres and titles while affirming that not every book is for every reader.
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Peer recommendations: Establish simple structures for students to recommend books to one another, whether through a class recommendation board, short written blurbs, or quick shout-outs. Creating recurring structures that integrate conversations about reading, no matter how small, contributes to a culture of readers.
These strategies not only give students practice in speaking and listening skills, but they build their identities as readers who can talk confidently about their reading lives.
Strategy 5: Use Light-Touch Accountability
Traditional accountability measures like reading logs often position independent reading as a compliance task rather than an engaging, joyful one. Still, accountability is important to ensure students aren’t using independent reading time to disengage. Even more important, accountability measures help to identify disengaged students so that teachers can understand root causes of withdrawal and develop supportive interventions.
Reading accountability is most impactful when it feels low-stakes, conversational, and grounded in students’ real experiences. Here’s what that might look like:
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Reading conferences: Short, informal teacher-student conferences allow you to check in on students’ reading lives, offer guidance, and celebrate progress without attaching high-stakes grades to the experience.
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Choice-based responses: Instead of assigning the same reading log or worksheet to every student, offer options for how students might reflect on their reading: brief written reflections, creative responses (e.g. poems or art work inspired by their reading), discussion-based check-ins, or goal-setting conversations. Autonomy in accountability helps keep students engaged in the process.
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Reflection over quizzes: Emphasize students’ thinking about their reading (What’s challenging you? What’s surprising you? How has your thinking changed?) rather than quizzing them on details. This reinforces that the purpose of reading is understanding and growth, not just task completion.
When we shift the goal of accountability from “catching” students who aren’t reading to supporting students in developing authentic reading lives, we minimize pressure and create an environment where students can genuinely explore their reading interests.
Independent Reading as the Anchor of Literacy Instruction
Students are growing up in a world where attention is constantly pulled by algorithms, notifications, and endless streams of content. In this ever-changing and precarious landscape, it is more important than ever that schools intentionally support students in developing strong literacy skills and reading lives. Independent reading is not about compliance; it’s about helping students build the stamina, curiosity, and critical literacy they need to navigate information, stories, and ideas in and out of the classroom.
When independent reading is thoughtfully designed—protected with time and grounded in choice, connected to instruction, supported through community, and reinforced with meaningful accountability—it becomes a powerful tool for building readers who see reading as relevant, engaging, and worth their time. Over time, students will begin to see themselves as readers, which will offer a lifetime of benefits!
This is where curriculum design can make a real difference. At Inquiry By Design (IBD), our lean, easy-to-implement English Language Arts and Spanish Language Arts programs are intentionally created to reduce planning demands so teachers can focus more fully on their students. Our curriculum also weaves independent reading into each unit through curated book lists that align with unit topics, with touchpoints to independent reading built-in throughout the curriculum. By doing the structural and planning work upfront, IBD curriculum creates space for teachers to nurture authentic reading habits and integrate independent reading in ways that feel purposeful, manageable, and responsive to the learners in front of them.
If you’re interested in learning more about how partnering with Inquiry By Design can support the reading lives and literacy skills of all your students, reach out to us today!
[1] https://news.miami.edu/stories/2025/12/reading-for-pleasure-is-plummeting-in-the-us.html
[2] https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/09500782.2024.2324948#abstract
[3] https://ncte.org/statement/independent-reading/
[4] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0361476X25000864