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. If you come across additional links that are useful, please comment.
As always, comment with questions.
14 comments:
Hi all-
I just wanted to say that I really enjoyed talking about the reading workshop in class last monday. I thought it was cool because it is something we could actually be doing when we are teachers. I also read the blog about the reading workshop and visited the Jennifer Myers reading and writing workshop page. This was a really neat and resourceful page. It has videos on it that demonstrated read alouds and mini lessons and a bunch of thigns like that. It was helpful to watch these videos and see the website becuase it helps you see how a reading workshop could be designed. Have a good weekend cya in class!
Whitney
I agree with whitney that the reading workshop was very useful for the future. I thought that the video was very interesting and gave very good ideas on how to use the reading workshop. I feel that i got a lot of useful info that i will use in the future as a teacher.
Brooke Stauffer
I also agree with what has been said. When I first heard reading workshop I was thinking it was the same thing that we did in high school but I was wrong. This workshop will be very useful to us as teachers because we will be able to help students read better. I am still a little confused on the opening part of the workshop though. I never understand what you are suppose to open with.
I agree with Jessica. When I heard reading workshop I thought I already knew what that meant, from my own experiences. However, I was wrong. The video helped to clear up questions that I had about reading workshops, and I believe I will be able to use this idea with my future students.
Jessica Wesaw
I agree that the Reading Workshop video was very useful. I know reading is a huge part of life, so I feel this introduction to the reading workshop will help me develop new ideas on how to get my students excited and engaged with reading.
I really enjoyed learning about the readers workshop. It was something that I don't remember doing. I feel like it can really improve students reading abilities. The teacher in the video had very creative ideas that interested the kids. It was neat to see the workshop in process.
I really liked learning about the reading workshop. It seems like a great and organized way have students read during class. I like how it is set up that you can teach a lesson, have the students independently practice, but also to have mini conferences to gauge each student's individual progress. I visited Karen McDavid's website, and I found it to be very useful in that it provides more information about workshops. I really liked that Karen posted a conferring template, which is a spreadsheet to keep track of each students progress. I defiantly plan to use reading workshop in my classroom when I become a teacher!
Lauren Henderson
hey everyone,
I also felt that last weeks class was very interesting and useful to our future classrooms. It is a good resource to have and teaches great techniques that everyone could use in their own classes, it can also be modified to fit individual needs. Hope everyone has a great end to their weekend!
Ashley
I also really enjoyed class on Monday! I don't really remember doing Reader's Workshop as a student, which is too bad. Even now, I still have a difficult time focusing on what I am supposed to read and mini-lessons could have helped guide/give me strategies for focusing my reading. This will definitely be a worthwhile strategy for my classroom! See everyone tomorrow!
The video that we watched in class on reading workshops was extremely helpful to me as a future teacher. I had never heard of reading workshops before class on Monday, and I find them very useful. The teacher in the video was very enthusiastic about teaching her students about reading and I learned a lot by watching her interact with them. The maturity level that she expects from her students shows and you can tell that her students respect her. I will take the advice she gave in the video and use it in my career as a future teacher.
Hello! I had a hard time visualizing readers workshop when we first started class last week because I could only picture writers workshop. The concept didn't seem to translate for me but I enjoyed the video and really like the idea of readers workshop. I think the mini lesson would be a challenging to plan because of the limited time and subject matter, but it seems like a very beneficial part of the class.
I agree with a lot that has been said about the reading workshop. I find that it might be difficult to be able to time all the activites correctly to be able to fit into the scheduled time. I find all this information very useful as a future teacher. I enjoyed learning abotu the mini lessons and got some great ideas about what I can do as a teacher.
This was the first time I have heard about the reading and writing workshops and I find it really interesting. These workshops will allow the student to read and write about something of their interest while at the same time allow the teacher to keep tract of their progress. These workshops also allow the students and teacher have one on one time for more tailored instruction to each child.
I found the websites to be very helpful. Karen McDavid's webiste is a wonderful resource. It tells you how she set it up with all the pages she uses in her workshop. She also provides some ideas that others have used. Jennifer Myer's page was really interesting and helpful because it provided videos of the workshops. This allows you to see how it is run in an acutal classroom instead of just reading the concept or the situation on paper.
I found the 'differeniating in a reading workshop' article very interesting. I enjoyed reading about how you could use this useful tactic to aid students of all learning backgrounds and levels. I believe that reading workshops are a necessity to teach reading in a any type of classroom.
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