What are you thinking about a Reading Workshop after our last class? What about the idea do you like? Not like? What seems to make sense? What is confusing? I am very interested in your thinking so that we can figure out where to go next. Please write anything you are thinking...there are no "right" answers...
In addition, what is the "one" thing you are going to try out! We discussed these briefly at the end of class. Please write about that one thing so that we can all get a sense of not only what you are thinking, but also of where you are going!
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I have looked over the guidelines of a readers workshop and believe that it should start to look a little different in 5th grade. For one thing, I only have a 45 minutes block of reading before lunch. Much of our reading is in the content area during science and social studies.
I like the idea of choosing individual books in the younger grades, but in 5th I would at least do groups for books, like literature circles, which I have done in the past. I feel the opportunity for in-depth discussion is missed if there is no common book. Many of the books at this level deal with complex social and historical issues. I would like to do lit circles again, but later in the year, after they have had more practice with the strategies. In previous years the lit circle discussions could get off-topic or be very superficial without considerable teacher guidance.
I have moved the desks around today to fascilitate turn and talk. This should help with the written responses that I require, although it is not every day. I require formal written responses of their ideas and their justifications, so this takes more time.
I like the idea of a class status check to keep track of their free reading. I might tweak it a little to include the page they are up to. I think this will encourage more free reading, both in class and at home.
I generally do a skill lesson each day, so this is not a change for me.
I am using the basal most weeks, except when I do a class novel or lit circles. When dong the basal I am also working on something else. Example: right now we are reading Nancy Drew from the weekly newspaper. So they are usually reading something else in addition to the basal story.
I struggle with how to set up the reading portion. The past 2 months we have been reading orally, whole class, and modeling the strategies. Now I would like them to be able to read with a partner and follow the strategies taught, followed by some whole group discussion and the focus question for their response. I don't have 30 minutes for this in 1day so it has to be spread out over 2 days.
My read aloud is a chapter book that I read in when we can fit it in. We model the think alouds with this book. It is a book they enjoy and are invested in. But it is not an official part of the reading lesson or time block.
So, my question is...have you used this program in 5th grade as is or does it look a little different from the primary grades?
What changes or elements would you consider essential?
There was so much to think about after the last class. I liked the "status of the class" idea. And I will begin using that this week. Also, I am going to try the "turn and talk" with my class. I have always set my class desks in groups because it works well for Science experiments and any other group activity I do. I think I will use this strategy as I review for a Science test this week.
The students are using a section of their 5 subject notebook as a "response to reading" journal. They seem to like it a lot. They are always anxious for me to read their thoughts so that I can respond to them.
I am liking all of these ideas for teaching comprehension!!
I am very excited about restructuring my reading block though as with any new program or method, it can be a bit daunting. I'm glad I took a lot of notes!! I already have a read aloud every day as well as teaching a mini lesson of some sort (grammar, phonics, comp. strategy)so these aren't new but the actual book choice does leave me with some questions. Do I choose a bucket(s) of books I want them to choose from or do they choose any book in the classroom. My instinct is to not limit them but some kids need to have just a few choices. I also know that at times I will add non fiction thematic books, but in general do I just let them choose as in D.E.A.R. time? Can D.E.A.R. time be incorporated into this or is it still planned for a different time in the day?
I am also trying to figure out a structure of how to approach partner or small group reading. I may designate one week per month for each one,I.E. alone, partners, small group, whole class, or is this too structured? I do plan on doing a 'status of class' record as it is a great tool for record keeping and lets the students know that this is a serious expectation.
I know that once I begin many of my questions will be answered and that I'll feel more comfortable doing this. I've always felt that being in this profession means that you have to have the abililty to think on your feet, although I tend to feel more confident knowing exactly what to do and expect at any given moment. I need to have confidence in my ability to learn from my students and direct my lessons accordingly.
I put my desk into groups for the Halloween party and left them that way. the class loves it that way. I'm letting go of some of the control that I feel I need to have.
I love the concept of a readers workshop. I really like the idea of choice for the students but I have the same questions as Liz. Do I pick the books that they choose from or do they? It makes sense that they get to choose what interest them. I think their reading will be more "real" and they will get more from it. How do i monitor their comprehension if they are all reading different books? When we all read the same story I can create questions that I feel take them to a deeper level and that makes it easier for me to monitor their comprehension. I do read alouds at least twice a week and they write in their reading response books before, during and after. They were great to share with parents at conference and help explain what I'm looking for form them as readers. We talk and turn and share our thinking. I love when they turn and talk and they learn from each other. I learn from them as well.
I have to say that I'm excited about the idea of a Reader's Workshop, but am still muddling through how to make it work for me. I have taken some of the ideas (lots of turn and talk, status of the class, reading response journals...). I guess I'm working on how to make this work with a class novel, how to incorporate checking in and conferencing with students about their books, etc. I like the element of choice for my students, but I'm still hung up in the management piece. There's a part of me that has a hard time letting go of the "control" element that an anthology or whole class novel can provide. I've always considered myself a strong teacher in other areas but felt like teaching reading was my weakness. I'm excited to have strategies to help my students enjoy reading, but I think I'm still a little scared about making it all work and feeling like I know what's going on with each of my students. I think I need to see it in action in a classroom that has experience using Reader's Workshop, where it "runs itself". Right now while I am excited, I feel scared to let go and dive in. Sorry if this rambles!
I have felt like this year I have gone to so many meeting where people are saying to use a reading workshop, but no one is really saying how to do it. I was happy that most of the last class was used to explain what a reading workshop would look like in our classrooms. Having a general schedule of what should be done each day was very helpful.
I started doing literature circle three weeks ago. So far it is going very well and I feel like my students are starting to show an understanding of the comprehension strategies I have been modeling. Today I started doing the status check in at DEAR time. I talked to my students about it last week and asked them why they thought I was going to take the time to do this. They had ideas I hadn't even thought of.
Right now I am a little confused about how to do reading conferences with my students. I would like a little more help with this idea.
Usually after attending the class and hearing all the discussion...I leave with my head spinning! I like so many ideas but have come to realize that I need to take lots of deep breaths and try one or two new things so as not to feel too overwhelmed.
I feel SO LUCKY to have been able to partake in book study groups with our reading specialist, Dinnette Johnson, over the past 3 years. She got us thinking about incorporating more reading comprehension strategies & Reader's Workshop by reading 'Mosaic of Thought', 'Strategies That Work', and I LOVE the book 'Reading With Meaning' by Debbie Miller. We are currently reading 'In the Company of Children'. All of these resources have helped me to be brave and test out 'Reader's Workshop' last year & then continue on with it this year. The biggest obstacle for me has always been TIME to do it effectively. I have found some management techniques that have certainly helped make things run more smoothly--it's been lots of trial & error. September is all about how to care for books, borrow books and I model what a reader looks like-- as many/most of them are not "readers" yet! This year I spent more time on metacognition and how to choose "just right" books and this seems to be paying off--this was most of October.
I really love the book 'Comprehension Connections' and have tried so many of the ideas through p.43 and found my first graders to be very engaged (particularly with the reading salad and the schema roller...gimics do work!). I am working with my grade level colleagues on creating a conference sheet to use while conferring with them during their independent reading time. Last year I used index cards & this was not something that worked for me. I'm thinking of something more like a checklist and maybe space to take a running record if I choose.
I think it is important for us to realize that how 'Reader's Workshop' looks in one class doesn't need to be how it looks in all classrooms. Incorporating mini-lessons, self-selection of books, independent reading time, and sharing/reflecting time seem to be the key elements to include.
Reflecting upon this question, my mind wanders in so many different directions. I think back to my classroom and how I utilzed the elements of a framework model, as a reading specialist in this district, and as a reading specialist in my previous district and I look at and think about "how did I get there?"
Reading the differnt posts, reminds me of the process over time that it takes to fully implement a workshop framework. I rememeber being asked to think about my beliefs about how children learn and how I was going to support those beliefs in my classroom. Therefore, I needed to think about what research, theorists, and philosophies I subscribed to, and what the experts in RW believed.
Here are my tracks of thinking and the ideas I needed to incoporate into my classroom. They included, 1) Learning occurs in a social context. I believe the work of Vygotsky which stated that children need to be able to work together, in groups or in pairs most of the time. The "kid" languauge used between children can solidify knowlegde that no matter how many times as a teacher I said something, it did not register until Johnnie said it to Brett. 2) Children learn through authentic tasks. Authentic tasks are meaningful to the student and provide the student with a sense of purpose. These tasks help students become readers and writers in the truest sense, not just to complete a worksheet or answer the comprehension question. But empowers children to read and write for enjoyment and purpose. 3) These authentic tasks also need to be differentiated. Reading the research from Marie Clay, babies do not all walk at the same time or talk at the same time, therefore, why as teachers do we subscribe to prepackaged programs that have all the students completing the same tasks at the same time? Are they all ready for that lesson on syllables? Do they all need the same instruction? Can Kate already break up multisyllabic words effectively? A reader's workshop requires a teacher to be able to provide differentiated, authentic tasks for students to meet their current needs. Teachers need to assess students continuously and know what to do what that information. Therefore teachers need to provide purposeful tasks that allow for open ended, critical thinking. This is key to sustainability in this model. 4)Differentiation leads to children working at their independent level for purposeful application. 5) Another key idea I needed to think about was balancing Process vs. Product. I needed to let go of the control of documentation through worksheets as I shifted to this framwork because much of the learning comes from the process the children engaged in (which, when I realized this, made my life so much easier because I was not changing centers each week or correcting papers to all hours of the night). It is not the product that mattered but the process of learning that occurred. Therefore, I learned to document growth through conferences, anecdotal notes, guided groups, and authentic activities.
Providing a reader's workshop framework based on the Gradual release of responsibility model made my teaching more effective and streamlined my instruction. I literally had a self-sustaining classroom of teaching and learning.
Okay...did I overwhelm anyone? There is so much to think about and say when shifting to this model of teaching, but the one thing I must say is that my students were always engaged and enjoyed reading and writing.
Over time, my teaching was validated by my readings of Keene, Zimmerman, Harvey, Fountas, Pinnell, MacCarrier, Lyons, Taberski, and others. But, I would never have been able to shift without the support of my colleagues. Make sure you have someone that you can take this journey with in your thinking!
I have been contemplating how to organize the reader's workshop format in my classroom since last year. Dinnette Johnson shared the new phonics program by Pinnell & Fountas (firsthand by Heinemann) with us at our last study group. As I looked through the materials, it made sense to me. It included parts of what I had already been doing and provided new ideas and structure to create the reading/writing workshop. I have restructured my schedule this week. I still need to go through the curriculum maps and be sure that all skills/concepts will be covered. I am trying to figure out the best way to work in McGraw-Hill and the science/social studied piece. I feel good about the change but still feel that I need to fine tune the schedule but I am comfortable with the direction I have taken. My students are very cooperative this year and love trying new things. They have tried the reading salad at home and thought the schema roller was the best! Some are using their "paint cards" during independent reading and we added a new chart on Metacognition to our wall. I moved the first one we did to the hall for parent conference day. One student noticed that it was missing and asked where it was. I am loving this class!
At this point I really feel like I am digesting everything I have seen about the reading workshop and trying some things out here and there to see what can best meet the needs of my students. With the idea in mind that students need to be trained to perform the tasks of a reading workshop, I did take a couple of days to focus on teaching them to choose a "Just Right" Book. I even took the idea that Tomasen had mentioned of using "The Three Bears" as a starting point for this discussion. It worked PERFECTLY for first graders and meshed well with the idea that students need to "try out" a book before they can decide if it is "just right" for them. I have given my first graders chances to read on their own for 5-10 minutes to start, and many of them have begun to read on their own if they finish other work before classmates do. After free reading times, I have used the "status of the class" idea to keep track of their reading choices and progress. For the future, I am thinking of letting them continue reading while I do this, and I will just move from one desk to the next to get each student's status. At this point I am interested in finding ways to incorporate more componets of the Reading Workshop into our day, but I am still trying to discover what reading workshop would look like im my class, with my daily schedule. I think what would help me most at this point would be to see how many different ways various teachers organize and carry out a reading workshop, particulary the response portion of a reading workshop! If can begin to see how a reading workshop can look different in different classes, I think I will feel more comfortable that it looks very different in my room.
I don't have my own classroom, so I can't really implement a reader's workshop right now. I like the ideas and thoughts behind this, just as I can see a great benefit from instruction in comprehension strategies. I love the idea of letting the children decide on book basket names and letting them organize the books where they feel they belong. What a sense of ownership this is for them! I agree with the read aloud, mini-lesson, reading time when I could pull small groups, and the response time. The status of the class for first grade, for me, would have to be more than asking them the title of what they read. Like Leslie, I would need to conference with each child and take notes, or use some sort of checklist for assessment. I would also do running records during this time. Now that I'm thinking about this, I need to look up a copy of a form that a teacher in another district gave me. She used it just for this purpose. To confer with children during reader's workshop. If I find it tonight, I'll bring it to class. Oh, I also like the idea of letting them see you reading for pleasure. I have always imagined having a classroom like this. I think it takes a lot of planning, but it's worth it for the children and for the teacher. I think the upfront planning would reap great benefits. I would love to teach reading without feeling the need to follow a purchased reading program.
I came away from our last class wondering how I would be able to begin such a big endeavor with a class of 18 first graders, 11 of which are in title I, meaning that I don't actually have all of my students in my classroom until 10:15. When you add in snack and then 3 times a week a special in the morning...I wondered how it would all work time wise.
I am taking baby steps though. For some time now I have been feeling as though my library was just not at all what it should be. I have old recycled books that I have no idea how I got. I do have a few good ones, but many are ripped and missing pages. My students went through the bookshelf and we got rid of any books that were destroyed or just not appropriate. Then the students divided the books into piles of easy, medium and hard books, just so that I could get an idea of which I had the most of. Now, let me tell you that their idea of easy, medium and hard books we not always the same as mine. I also added some of my "special" books into the pile. These are books that I keep to read to them, but in actuality I don't always get to them, so I decided that they are better off as class books.
I plan on doing the lesson on finding a "just right" book and hope that will help with their book choices. I have also just started a readers log for each student. At the end of dear time each day they write down what book they read and something about the book...a question, connection or just a thought. They seems to really like this and are excited to read what they wrote to the class. I am finding that because of this they are actually "reading" during dear time. It was exciting to see that many students were getting book suggestions from hearing their classmates readers logs.
Anyway, I do like the idea of organizing a readers workshop in my classroom. However, I have more work to do. I wish I could see exactly how it would work. I am just not sure I fully understand the process as a whole.
I left the last class feeling overwhelmed, but glad to have had an explanation of an actual reading workshop. I feel as though some of us at Fisk are a little behind the other schools because we were under the impression (until this year) that we were still supposed to be using McGraw Hill...only. Although I was part of the Mosaic of Thought study group last year, that was really my only introduction to comprehension strategies and using methods other than the basil. So I came into this class (and the Reading With Meaning study group that I'm in) feeling very confused and overwhelmed. I wasn't sure where to start or what direction to head in. Then I heard that other schools were already implementing reading workshop and I felt verrrrry behind. I met with our reading specialist and sort of mapped out a plan for how to proceed. Since we're already into November, I feel like I need to do things a little differently than if I had started out in September.
Recently my students started taking apart our classroom library and grouping our books into genres/themes/etc. My plan is to get my classroom library situated so they actually have good book choices. So much of what they've been "reading" is much too high. Our reading specialist, Dinnette Johnson, gave me this website: http://hill.troy.k12.mi.us/staff/bnewingham/myweb3/library%20Organization.htm to help with library organization, book basket labels, etc. She also helped me with a few beginning 'thinking' lessons.
I kind of went backwards and did a lot of questioning last month so I'll continue with think alouds and monitoring for comprehension for now. I feel better about the comprehension strategies but I don't feel ready to implement a reading workshop yet. I need to just do pieces of it to start with.
I have implemented bits and pieces of Reader's workshop into my classroom. It has taken me a while to feel comfortable with the idea of the kids doing so much independent reading. I was always worried that other teachers or the principal would walk by and think that I wasn't doing anything. I have gradually become more comfortable with this part of the workshop, but I still have my moments. When I start to question whether or not I am doing the right thing for my students, I remind myself that like writing, reading is a process. Kids need time to read and practice the skills they are developing if I want them to become proficient readers.
One of the tools I have been using this year that I really like is a reader's notebook. My students and I write letters back and forth about their reading. At times I will assign them a specific topic or piece of literature to write about but most of the time they are writing about their independent reading book. The letters have been an amazing assessment tool for me. I feel like I know my students and their ability to comprehend and respond to text better than I ever have before.
With many ideas rattling around in my head and no clear picture of what I wanted the finished product to look like, I got a start at "something different" by having a good discussion with my class about how they choose a book to read. They had some great ideas and it is my hope that they really use those strategies! While they were at art, I pulled out many books which I usually take out for small group reading. They were very excited to see them out on the floor when they returned. They really "got into it" as we did some sorting, and they took charge of making labels for the baskets. They were very happy to finally be able to choose from the many new baskets of books and be able to settle down with their choice. We already have a "read and write" notebook so will use that for responses to our reading. I'm looking forward to seeing how they write about their reading and also looking foward to discussing their books with them. It's a small step, but it's a start.
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