SSR with Intervention: A School Library Action Research Project

This book fills a publishing gap by explaining how the school library media specialist should be and is an integral player in the school's action research and reading instruction team. It also includes all the information and resources necessary to successfully implement Sustained Silent Reading with Intervention in any classroom or school. It should be a sought after resource for schools trying to raise reading scores to reach Adequate Yearly Progress. Library Media Specialist Leslie Preddy and her colleagues show how the school library media specialist and the classroom teacher can be a winning team, working together to solve an instructional problem and raise reading scores to reach Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP). They offer a Sustained Silent Reading (SSR) with Intervention program complete with the action research, tools, and the knowledge necessary to successfully implement the program in any classroom. The book begins with a review of the literature on SSR. The greatest portion of the text shares the action research experience and explains how to easily implement the simple, yet successful, reading program. Illustrations, student samples, forms, lists of writing and response prompts, and an index are all included.

About the Author :
Leslie B. Preddy is the LMS at Perry Meridian Middle School in Indianapolis. She has been active in the AASL is an adjunct professor at IUPUI and is co-author with Dr. Danny Callison of a forthcoming book with Libraries Unlimited.

Review :
A wonderful example of an effective action research project that shows that the intervention of a teacher-librarian really does have a positive impact on student achievement. Providing a resource for school media specialists and teachers, this book presents guidelines and advice for implementing sustained silent reading (SSR)….While geared toward a middle-school audience, the forms and ideas included can also work with higher and lower grade levels as well….Leslie Preddy presents findings from a research study in Indiana, as well as ideas and suggestions for implementation in other schools. With guidelines for both school media specialists and teachers….[t]his book can help any school wishing to encourage reading in students through classroom and library cooperation and collaboration. With extensive repoducible items, bibliography, and index, this is a useful resource for any school considering, currently using, or evaluating an SSR plan. The detailed table of contents enables any reader to quickly locate the appropriate area of the book, encouraging its ability to serve as a reference rather than a straight read….Recommended. My stand-up cheer for Leslie B. Preddy is wow, awesome, great! This book is a wonderful model. Here is a teacher-librarian who is challenged by her principal to do a piece of action reseach alongside all the teachers; so, Leslie and a few other teachers huddle. They worry that sustained silent reading (SSR) has been given a bad name by the National Reading Panel, and they want to test it for themselves on their teen students. They invent a simple method in which their students have response journals of what they read….The results? Various measures send up a green flag--and higher test scores. Leslie's book gives full details, the story, and various forms to use to duplicate her program. But the biggest measure is, teacher-librarians make a difference, and here is the evidence! Now for the rest of us Go and do thou likewise keeps ringing in this reader's ear. This book is a keeper that offers an action plan. Preddy, a library media specialist (LMS) in Indianapolis, describes a successful action research pilot project, Sustained Silent Reading (SSR) with Interventions, designed and implemented by a team of educators at the middle school at which she works. Following an overview of the literature on SSR, the text provides a detailed discussion of the Indianapolis experience, guidelines for middle school teachers interested in developing their own SSR with Intervention project, the role of the LMS in enhancing and accelerating a classroom and school reading culture, sample generic writing prompts for a variety of reading materials, and a section of reproducible forms and templates.