ELA CENTER

Dear Hugo Newman Families:

Welcome to Reading & Writing Workshop. We are excited to share the experience of your child’s journey with you by taking you on a tour of the workshop experience. Reading Workshop is an approach to the teaching of reading that helps children become lifelong, avid, and expert readers. The aim of Writing Workshop is to help children become powerful, passionate, and independent writers.

In Reading & Writing Workshop, class usually begins with a minilesson, in which the teacher shares a strategy that will help children become more powerful readers and writers. Then children go off to read - and to work on their reading and/or writing. Sometimes they are reading partner or book club books, other times they are reading independent books. Very young readers will read two or three books during a single reading workshop, and they will write one or two pieces during a single writing workshop. Older readers will read one book over several days or a week, and they will work on a piece over several days or a week. While the children read/ write the teacher works with small groups or confers with individual students.

The independent reading time of the workshop is the heart of the workshop. This is where most of the “magic” happens. Your child, from the first day of school, is set up to be independent during the workshop. During independent work time, students pull from the repertoire of strategies that they have learned in workshop.

Your child will mostly read books from the classroom library and the school library. They’ll bring these books home every day to read as well. The children will be interested in a huge variety of books. Some will love sports books, others will love books about animals, others will love adventure stories. Let me know if your child has special interests, and we’ll do our best to encourage those interests through reading.

During Writing Workshop, your child will write stories, essays, articles, books, and poetry in the writing workshop. They’ll learn about something called writing process. All professional writers follow a writing process. In writing process, writers collect ideas, they draft, they revise, and they publish. Sometimes they move through this process quickly, and sometimes they take more time for parts of the process.

Your children will have a variety of tools to support them in school and at home. These include:

Writing strategies - help writers become more powerful. They’ll learn these strategies during Writing Workshop.
Mentor texts - writers study model texts, which are usually by published writers, to learn more about the art of writing.
Checklists - our school uses writing checklists from the Teachers College Reading and Writing Project. These checklists support children in understanding expectations and setting personal goals.
Charts and mini-charts - teachers create a record of what they’ve taught, on large posters called charts or in mini-charts. These tools remind children of what they’ve learned.
Spelling and word charts - children often have personal or class lists of words they are working to spell accurately.

Our curriculum is divided into units of study. A reading unit of study focuses on a set of reading skills. For instance, in a mystery book club unit, children not only read mysteries, they learn to read more closely, thinking hard about small details that authors lay out as clues. With writing, a unit of study, might focus on fiction, or essay. At the end of most units of study, we’ll have a publishing celebration.

Our goal is for children to read as much as possible, and for all children to learn to love reading. We will help your child develop an identity as a writer. We hope it’s a beautiful, and life-changing experience. Let me know if for some reason reading and/or writing feel hard, and we’ll work together to support your child.

All the best,

Jeneca Parker

Principal, PS/IS 180