journal 60 20 minute study

In the last couple of weeks I've done a few 20 minute studies on my class.  I've just sat and jotted down what they were all doing.  Today I did it a bit differently, I picked 8 students to watch-all of whom were at different dailies-and jotted down what they were doing.  It was really interesting to see who was on task and who was not.  Of the kids that I was observing 1 of them was never on task the entire time.  Mind you, I didn't go over to him and redirect him, per the Daily 5 guidelines!  It took every bit of my being to not go speak with him but I didn't.  What I was happy to see is that of the 8 that I watched it was only 1 of them that was off task.  One other guy was off task for the first time I looked at him but that was right after we moved into our dailies and he has some underlying issues that make him take a bit longer to transition into things.  Once he got settled, he was deep into his daily.  One of my students that I observed was one of my most reluctant readers.  She sat the entire time with a nose in her book.  She has grown a lot this year and while I would love to say it's all because of the small group work I've done with her I also think it has a lot to do with the extended time with a nose in a book.  Prior to using the Daily 5 they would only have their nose in a book for the 25 minutes of SSR daily.  Now they are reading up to 45 minutes uninterrupted reading.  That's a whole 20 minutes more!!  Unbelieveable.  It makes me think that the research really is correct.  More time spent reading really does increase student achievement.