Choosing Books and Building Reading Stamina

I read one of my favorite books called "The Bee Tree" by Patricia Polacco. It's about a little girl who gets bored with her reading and her grandpa takes her on a hunt for a bee tree. The little girl discovers that sometimes the sweetest things ( honey and learning to read) must be worked for. Books can take you on great adventures!!  We talked about choosing "just right" books and building reading stamina! Then the students actually had time to read independently while I listened to some individals read. The students learned that reading stamina is reading for a long period of time without getting tired or giving up.  Our goal is to work up to 20 minutes of uninterrupted reading and we started and only got to 3 minutes before someone got up or started talking. We tried again and again and the longest time was 6 minutes. We will keep working to build our Class Reading Stamina.