WHAT WE DO IN GENERAL:
"Ultimately, people learn to read by reading. Data reveal an extraordinary alignment between the levels of text difficulty a student can handle and the student's score on the standardized test. The way that students progress up levels of text difficulty has everything to do with time spent reading." ---Lucy Calkins in A Guide to the Reading Workshop (2010: Heinemann).
Our goal is to help students read better----they should be able to coordinate the various skills required of increasingly more challenging material. The skills we work on break into three main topics: FLUENCY, COMPREHENSION, and VOCABULARY.
To read better, you have to read a lot; you have to want to. You have to like it. It is never my intent to make achievement on some standardized test the ultimate goal for any student. The tests we use are a reality, and externally we are judged, sorted and measured by testing companies. I accept this, and to a reasonable extent see that it's a good thing to reach for standards and rankings. How else do you know you're on track?
Well, you know in your heart----you know by your effort, your engagement, and how much time you put into something. It's ultimately most important that students and their teachers know we invested ourselves in loving to read, working on it, and making it our top priority.
To work on skills that fall within these general categories, I employ a structure called "Reading Workshop."
For years, I resisted this structure because I couldn't bear the jargony name "workshop," which conjures an image of fleecy-bearded elves making old-fashioned wooden toys. I am proud to report that I have accepted the cheesy word and moved on----the so-called "workshop" is a tested-and-proven way to engage students in reading at their individual levels, to teach them skills that stretch them into harder and harder text, and to hold them accountable for what they learn.
In a very general way, this is what it looks like:
READ ALOUD-----this happens daily to model specific reading and thinking strategies; the goal is to engage students in good literature, to show them how I "unpack" the meaning in a book
MINI-LESSON FOCUSED ON A SPECIFIC SKILL GOOD READERS USE----this happens daily: we gather as a whole group to watch and to practice a very narrow reading objective
STUDENTS READ INDEPENDENTLY FOR LONG PERIODS OF TIME FROM SELF-SELECTED MATERIAL THAT IS A GOOD FIT FOR THEM-----this is the most important part. Students learn by doing.
TEACHER MEETS WITH INDIVIDUALS & SMALL GROUPS DURING READING TIME TO "COACH" SPECIFIC SKILLS---intended to be short and purposeful toward one particular skill at a time
STUDENTS WRITE ABOUT WHAT THEY ARE DOING AS READERS-----each student maintains a reading journal, in which he or she records predictions, ideas, images, important words, character sketches...As we progress through the year, the journal entires will vary. Some will be prompted, some free-form, and these journals become a documentation of growth, improvement, and accountability.
WHAT WE ARE DOING SPECIFICALLY RIGHT NOW (AS OF ____):
YEAR-LONG READING WORKSHOP PLAN:
SEPT.
Establishing routines and expectations for daily reading workshop:
- Readers identify our best and worst reading times to help us learn how to change our reading lives for the better.
- Good readers know it's important to occasionally stop and analyze our reading in order to make positive changes in how we read.
- We recognize books that are on our own personal levels so we can spend a lot of time reading smoothly with accuracy and good comprehension.
- Optimal readers take off the brakes as we read, sometimes picking up our pace a bit, so we can take in both the details and the whole.
- You're in a good fit book, and you're reading it well, when you pay attention while reading, rather than reading on autopilot.
- When readers get confused we either reread or pay closer attention to the details.
- Great readers can choose how we feel about books, either reading them as if they are golden or being a curmudgeon toward them.
- Strong readers create a buzz about the books they love by summarizing and excerpting those books.
- When terrific readers come to a hard word, they try several ways of figuring it out so we can continue with the selection or story.
- Incredible readers use new vocabulary boldly!
OCT.
Creating and modeling the expected behaviors for partner and small group reading:
- Readers often retell main points of our books in order to create topics for discussion.
- When retelling, readers need to synthesize and fit-together all the parts that are pertinent.
- Intense listening creates a forcefield in which ideas grow.
- Listening well means being still when someone speaks; allowing the person time to talk; gesturing to show we understand; encouraging the person to grow his or her ideas.
- Good listeners ask for clarification.
- listeners occasionally retell what they heard, or invite the speaker to say more about a specific thing
- Good readers write to make sense of and remember their reading.
NOV.
- We envision the characters engaged in a sequence of actions as well as the setting. Readers sometimes share especially intense passages.
- We keep off-stage characters in our peripheral vision.
- Effective readers keep track of plot developments and scenes by letting authors paint a picture in our imaginations. Time lines and graphic organizers help.
- We make connections between a text and our own lives.
- Readers revise our mental movies, paying attention to details about main characters, setting, and peripheral characters.
- Good readers lift the level of their predictions by drawing on knowledge of what has happened before, of what life is really like, and of what this author is trying to show.
- Good readers let conversations about books reverberate, becoming conversations in the mind.
- We pay attention to subtle details.
DEC.
- Readers use more than one word to convey an important idea.
- Readers use theories as lenses----in other words, we stake out an idea and then test it against details we believe to be true.
- Readers grow more complex theories about characters by asking "How has the character changed since..." or "What has he or she learned?"
- Good readers can grow big ideas from seemingly small events in a story.
JAN.
- Preview nonfiction texts, noting dominant and subordinate information
- In nonfiction text, we pause to ask "What did this section teach me?"
- Readers retell using outlines, timelines, and graphics
- We read more attentively when we anticipate teaching others what we've learned.
- Good readers hold ourselves accountable for word solving, even when definitions aren't apparent.
- We preview difficult texts to develop better comprehension.
FEB.
- A thoughtful reader ponders the agenda that has shaped the text.
- A perceptive reader notices the feelings he or she has in response to texts and asks how the text cultivates that response.
- A careful reader goes from collecting to growing ideas.
- Readers bring ideas to the conversation and put their ideas on the table.
MARCH
APRIL
MAY
JUNE
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