Silent Reading in Y3

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How much reading do other Y3 classes do?
My son's class are reading for around 30 minutes each day. Their 'early bird' activity is silent reading every single day and they begin each afternoon in the same way. I feel it is too much. Is it normal for early bird activities to be the same each day?
Thanks in advance.

Too much reading? Why do you believe it's too much?

It might work really well to settle the class if they're particularly'fizzy'. I'm surprised at the notion of too much reading, like the pp.

I would like to see that letter of complaint!

Hmm it is a bit disingenuous to totally dismiss the OPs concern on the basis of 'too much reading?'
I don't think there is such a thing as too much reading; however, I assume no one would agree with having their children spend ALL their school day 'silently reading', so there must be a cut-off of 'too much silent reading during school time' somewhere. But is it at 10% of teaching time (approx 30 minutes/day)? Or at 20% of the school day? How much would PPs be happy for their kids to be silently reading at school, how about all morning?

I agree with PP that perhaps the teacher finds it to be a great technique with this particular class to get them to calm down and that they subsequently are in prime learning mode. In which case I would be pleased that the teacher is not worrying about 'lost teaching TIME' but instead focusing on how he/she can maximise teaching OUTCOMES - sometimes less is indeed more.

What would concern me however, is if I thought the 'silent reading' being at 10% of the school day meant that it was going at the cost of something else. E.g. is there not enough time for maths practice. Or, does the teacher feel that the 'silent reading' is all that is required in terms of 'teaching reading', and neglect other reading activities as the children have already done silent reading anyway. So maybe it would be worth establishing if there is anything to these concerns.

I wouldn't be very happy with that in yr 3 as you can't guarantee all children can silent read at that age, meaning some children will be spending an hour struggling.

So 15 mins morning 15 afternoon?
Doesn't sound like much, maybe the teacher finds it a good way to settle them in for the day then calm them after lunch

Do you really think that teachers don't follow timetables? If 30 mins reading has been scheduled it's not going to be at the cost of anything else! Admittedly it can be hard to fit everything into the timetable but do you really think Maths or writing would lose out to reading???
Early bird activity is before actual lessons begin, anyway, so come into class, get your reading book and read till the teacher takes the register. In the afternoon, probably the same: come in from lunch break get your books out and read while I take the register/sort out any problems from the lunch period.
I'd say that's fairly standard.

http://www.readingrockets.org/article/students-who-are-not-yet-fluent-silent-reading-not-best-use-classroom-time

I don't know what to suggest without knowing the class but in Y3 I'd expect there to be at least some children who couldn't read silently for that long - it might even put them off.