No:

Picture this: you settle into your desk and pull out your latest favorite book. Between sports, clubs, and homework you don’t have much personal time to read. You begin, “And the killer is…” but you’re forcefully interrupted by an article about watching paint dry given by your teacher. It’s impossible to focus when all you can think about is your book. Students are given SSR time during class with the intention of building vocabulary, reading endurance, and to get students excited about reading. When the only reading in a student’s life comes from forced classroom material, the student will begin to associate reading with uninteresting topics. Reading classroom content during SSR not only defeats the purpose, it’s counterproductive to the goals of SSR.

80 percent of students and staff who responded to the poll agree, SSR time is for students, not teachers. One South student under the nickname Crablegs said, “Some students already hate SSR, so making them read class content would make it even worse. Also, if you want kids reading, allow them to read what makes them excited and happy.” Even several staff responded that students should read books of their choice during SSR. One said, “To me, the concept of SSR is to have the students like reading. By reading non-course content they are more likely to enjoy it.” 

A vast majority of students use SSR time as a way to unwind from constant classroom instruction. Teachers get 225 minutes a week to teach us the material, all we ask for is 15. Students will never learn to enjoy reading when the majority of what they read is something they wouldn’t choose for themselves. As Nathaniel B very wisely said, “If I want to read Jeanette McCurdy’s new book, what’s so wrong with that?? Maybe teachers can enforce it, but the school shouldn’t.”

Yes:

Okay, I already know the poll already reveals how unpopular this opinion is but hear me out: by integrating classroom-related materials with SSR, this could be greatly beneficial to teachers, and to students alike.

Let’s pretend that it’s overnight on one particularly chilly school day in January; as you wake up, one look outside the window uncovers a flurry of snowflakes, tossed around in a baleful wind, slamming into your windows at 100 mph. A quick look at your phone confirms your suspicions: It’s Dr. Gandhi, confirming that school has gotten cancelled. Hooray! It’s good news for you, but not so much for teachers; as for educators alike, their lengthy plans detailing what to teach and to assign all just got pushed back by a day, and now, they must scramble to compress their content together, and get all their classes back on track for their plans or risk ending up behind on their content. The severity of issues like these could be lessened with assigning classroom content with SSR; to have students independently cover materials that would already get assigned during class time, this could help recover some of the precious instruction time lost. Even without a blizzard, this could prove to be helpful, as teachers now have additional time to cover extra material that could be proven to be highly valuable on quiz day.

As for students, an anonymous respondent answered the poll mentioning how some students already aren’t very attentive in reading their books, combined with the fact that most of the books aren’t very educationally relevant when the reading material could be for example, an article on Ancient Roman Military Life where it would be helpful for the culture section on the upcoming Latin test. Of course, there are numerous other opportunities that could result from inserting educational content for SSR, and these are just some of the possibilities.