Reading Workshop is a powerful way for teachers to introduce new reading skills to children in a comfortable, social environment. As discussed in class, there are three major parts to the Workshop:
* The Minilesson (10 - 15 minutes)
The minilesson is meant to be a concentrated lesson focusing on one element of reading. These minilessons tend to fall into one of three categories: management, strategy, and what Joanna Hindley calls "literary gossip." Management are those lessons you will begin with at the very beginning of the year, establishing what your workshop will look like so you can engage in strategy and literacy gossip lessons without having to worry about structure. A look at the first six weeks of a first grade reading workshop can be found here (the link will download as a .doc file). Additional sources for minilesson ideas can be found at the Learning Pad.
* Independent Reading (students) & Conferencing (teacher) (30 - 40 minutes)
After the minilesson, the students are released to practice their skills. This looks differently in different rooms. In my own classroom, students spread throughout the room, sitting in chairs and on the carpets; the only rule was no sitting under the tables because I'm old and don't want to be crawling after anyone. Other teachers have their students reading at their tables, some have their students only reading in a particular area of the room. Depending on your own comfort level and your classroom setup, this portion of the workshop could look many different ways.
While children are reading, you are conferencing with students to gauge how well they are using their strategies, what books they are currently reading and which directions they need to move in to become even better readers. This is the most important element of the Reading Workshop - where the teaching happens. Conferencing can get sticky, but that time you spend with individual children and groups of children who have similar skill levels is invaluable. For another, more detailed view of conferencing, look at Bayview Education. They also have several forms available for download for record keeping.
* Sharing (10 - 15 minutes)
Sharing is an opportunity for students to collaboratively talk about their progress as readers, sharing their use of strategies and celebrating their successes. You can work this section several ways - sign up for kid's share, have a daily schedule, or choose students based on what you saw in conferences that day. It's very flexible. Sharing is also so important - it allows kiddos to hear about what works from other children, who may explain it in ways you didn't. Reteaching is always a beautiful thing.
Additional Internet resources for the Reading Workshop:
Karen McDavid's Reading Workshop Page: An excellent page with a lot of great information, including minilesson ideas, professional books suggestions and forms for record keeping. Contains a list of additional links that are worth checking out.
Jennifer Myers' Reading and Writing Workshop Page: Another excellent page containing video of minilessons, children's work, and background in establishing the Workshop structure.
Differentiation in a Reader's Workshop: This Scholastic article addresses the many ways that a teacher reaches the variety of different learners in their classroom. There are several downloads here that are worth space on your hard drive.
Hopefully, this entry on Reading Workshop is helpful, even though I realize it barely touches the surface. I will post the major links in this entry to the main blog page to ease navigation. If you come across additional links that are useful, please comment.
A post about classroom library organization is in the works - so much to write, so little time!
As always, comment with questions.
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12 comments:
I thoroughly enjoyed watching the teacher conferencing with students in the video in class today(9/18). I can understand now, why in this blog it says: "This is the most important element of the Reading Workshop - where the teaching happens." As discussed in the video, I am nervous for those students who come in with lots of knowledge and a really good grasp of their text. I fear that I will not be able to find things to teach them. I'm sure this comes with experience as well. Also, I know that in my future classroom, I will have a large variety of reading levels and I wonder how I will teach minilessons to my class when each student will be working on different things?
I found this blog posting and the video we watched in class to me extremely helpful in explaining the reading workshop. The video was especially beneficial to me because I learned a lot from watching the teacher actually work one-on-one with her students. I was surprised at how advanced the students in her class were at reflecting on their experiences as readers. I hope that I am able to inspire in the kids in my classroom this same love for reading! I also thought it was helpful that you (Nicholas) shared with us the strategies you used in your own classroom. Hearing about real teacher experiences is incredibly insightful to us all as future teachers and I really appreciate all of the information you have share with us. Overall, I really feel like I already have a better grasp of what a reading workshop is and all the steps that are included in the process.
I very much enjoyed the videos that you showed during class about reading workshop. I thought that watching someone in action was very helpful rather than you just telling us how it should be done. I also like how you broke down the time for each segment during the workshop, this was very helpful to us who didn't know much about this strategy. I really liked how the teacher had the student go through her reading logs and had her figure out how her responses had changed from the first one to the most recent. I feel like this is a great way to give students the independence they need and they can figure out how to organize and their own strategies for this type of assessmnet. I liked how the teacher didn't give her direction on how to go about doing it but once she told her the way she did it the teacher then said she would possibly use that strategy as a mini-lesson because she hadn't even thought of it. Teachers helping students and students helping teachers. This video was a great resource and very informational, I hope to see more videos like this on other strategies. Thanks for sharing!
Goodness gracious am I glad you made this post! I could sit here for hours going to all those links and reading up on ideas and watching videos. I immediatly put all the links into my favorites so I can keep them at just a click away. I really enjoyed the Jennifer Myers site. The videos are great. One of them called "text to text connections" I have seen used in the classroom before. Its amazing how kids can get so excited about those little things. In the class that I observed anytime the child remembered a text to text or text to self connection they did a little sign with their hands and the whole class knew without speaking that they had made a connection and then after the story was over they shared their connections. Definitely an idea that I will use in the class.
I never heard about reading workshop before we discussed it in class. I think this is a great way to teach reading in the classroom and I hope to use it in my classroom! This post helped me see how the reading workshop is broken down. The links are very helpful and I will use them as a resource in the future when I start reading workshop. I also enjoyed in the video we watched in class about conferences. Talking with students is crucial and important so we teachers can identify their strengths and weaknesses to formulate appropriate lessons which help them grow as readers. I like the concept of reading workshop and knowing how it looks in the classroom helps me feel more prepared to teaching reading. Thanks for the links :-)
Now that I have a better understanding of Reading Workshop, I can definately see myself applying it to my future teaching. I realize that reading is extremely important and can also be challenging to teach. I feel that doing a mini lesson, having students read individually, and then conferencing with them is a great way to teach and practice reading. Watching the video clarified that conferencing can be really useful for students that may be more advanced or students that may struggle with reading. How could I apply Reading Workshop into a group activity?
I really like learning more about reading workshop, because I feel that it is such a valuable tool for student learning. The conferencing seems like a great idea, and it makes a lot more sense now that I have seen the video about reading workshop in class. It still seems as though it is a lot of work, but it seems more manageable after watching a real teacher demonstrate it. Although it is extremely time-consuming, it is well worth it. As, a teacher, you can see how each student is progressing in their reading, and come up with individualized strategies to help them forward.
Reading workshop is something that I really agree with. I think that it is an extremely effective way to teach reading. I understand how the layout is with the mini-lesson and how to teach it. Watching the videos help me better understand the lesson is intended to flow. It seems very manageable when the students understand the procedure. ...I am confused on how to select what to conduct the mini-lessons on? The students are all going to be learning at different levels and I am not sure how to conduct mini-lessons that apply to all students? (I am sure there is a way because it seems to be successful for so many teachers, but it is still at the overwhelming stage for me!)
Last year was when I was inrtroduced to readin workshop and I felt that I had a good grasp on what it was. Still, the article and video we saw helped me so much more to better understand it and feel more prepared to take part in readers workshop. Throughout our discussions and talking about everything that was involved for the workshop I realize how important it is to have this in your classroom everyday, or close to. I am anxious to take part in reader's workshop and get to know my students as readers. It is so nice to hear how you used this in your classroom because it helps me visualize what it should look like and what I want my library to look like. Reader's workshop should take up a lot of our school day and I hope that students can see how fun and exciting reading is. It is great to see on this blog the overview of reader's workshop to remind us what all is included in it and what students and teachers should do. Thanks for posting all of this for us and reviewing the essentials!
I love reading workshop activities and think it is one of the best ways to get students actively involved with the subject. I am a little nervous about adapting my reading workshops so that all students get something out of it, but I guess that is just part of being a teacher! I also think writing workshop is very essential to have in the classroom as well, and can go hand in hand with the reader's workshop. I am hoping to get a few more ideas for both during this class.
Just like most others have posted, I have enjoyed and learned a lot more about how the Reading Workshop happends and what different activities are involved. I feel like I learned somewhat about this in the Reading I/Writing cluster, but I was never really able to practice anything. Our field experience was mainly observation, we were never able to work much with children on their writing and reading. I feel like I will be more preparted after this semester because I am finally learned a lot more that I wll need to know as a teacher.
I really liked the article on Differentiation in the classroom. When the teacher talked about the students taking charge of their own learning and being responsible for their own progress, really impressed me. I thought it was interesting how much she used their assessment tests in the classroom. It shows that the assessment tests actually had a purpose rather than something all the teachers needed to do. She had the students go over them and had them set goals for themselves which was very interesting as well. Also using them to assess which group they were to be placed in for lit circles was also interesting.
I think the fact that she actually has conferences with the students about their scores shows that the scores are actually important and the students should take them seriously as well. It also gives the students a purpose in reading. By setting them up with something to focus on the students actually have a purpose for reading and a goal to reach.
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