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The Workshop approach to apprenticing readers & writers, as developed by Master Teachers Donald Graves, Nancie Atwell, Lucy Caulkins, Linda Rief, Regie Routman, and Penny Kittle; is a student-centred, skills-based approach to developing student independence and effectiveness as readers and writers in an environment that offers maximal differentiation and student choice and voice in the English classroom. The primary goal of the Workshop approach is fostering life-long, voracious, and critical readers and writers.
The majority of Workshop time is devoted to student practise developing independent reading, writing, and research processes, skills, and strategies with self-selected texts and topics. The teacher acts as coach and mentor, modelling reading/writing/research/critical literacy skills in mini-lessons with mentor texts, and conferencing with students to tailor instruction to individual strengths and needs. Quite often, diverse student needs in an urban board like the TDSB necessitates the incorporation of comprehension strategy instruction, as developed by Master Teachers Kylene Beers, Cris Tovani, Jim Burke, Susan Zimmerman and Ellin Oliver Keene.
Our rapidly changing media landscape and 21st century communication demands of the knowledge economy also necessitates developing critical literacy and digital citizenship as developed by the Association for Media Literacy (AML), and Master Teachers Paulo Friere, Linda Christensen, Hilary Janks, and Allan Luke.
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