Introduced by Nancie Atwell in 1987, reading workshop involves students in text selection, response, and discussion. A new approach to teaching and learning literature, reading workshop de-emphasizes the teacher’s role as director of instruction and focuses on developing reading, writing, and discussion skills as both an independent and cooperative learning experience. Adjustable and appropriate for first through eighth grades, successful reading workshop relies on five components: reading, responding, sharing, minilessons, and reading aloud. Additionally, reading workshop involves the students in using the five stages of the reading process: prereading, reading, responding, responding, exploring, applying.
Reading: Students are taught the Goldilocks Strategy of determining the appropriate level of reading material in addition to choosing favorite topics or authors in order to make good selections of books. They are given opportunities to browse the school and classroom library, listen to book talks that introduce the plot of particular books, as well as listen to the recommendations of favorite books of their peers, teachers, and librarians. Book talks are especially helpful because they are similar to movie trailers, which introduce the characters, plot and setting, show some of the pictures or diagrams, and even provide a reading of the first paragraph or so. These opportunities help students to choose a book that will be both enjoyable and appropriately challenging to read. Students are expected to read their books independently for about 30 to 60 minutes. Teachers model this reading and participate in discussion as they talk about what their reading with their students and listen to their students favorite passages, quotes, or other notable ideas.
The Goldilocks Rules for Choosing a Book That is “Just Right”
Too Easy Books
• I have read the book many times
before.
• I understand and can retell the story without much effort.
• I know and understand almost every word.
• I can read the book smoothly and fluently without much practice.
Too Hard Books
• There are five or more words on a page that I do not recognize.
• I am confused about what is happening in the story.
• When I read the words I sound choppy.
• I need help when reading this book.
Just Right Books
• The book is new to me and the topic is interesting to me.
• I understand what is happening in most of the story.
• I can retell what I have read.
• I recognize most of the words on the page, but there are some words
to work on.
• I can read the book by myself but may need help if I hit a tough spot.
© Karen A. McDavid 2007
Reading Logs/Responding: In effort to record students’ responses to their reading, students keep a log that chronicles their thoughts throughout their reading. Teachers are able to read a continuous dialog from their students through these journals that helps them to gain insight on their students’ reading strategies, comprehension, and other insights. Information gained from students’ journals enables teachers to create lessons (minilessons) that tailor to the needs of the class. For example, when students tend to respond only one way to their reading, teachers may spend some time of a minilesson addressing types of reading responses. Hancock (2007) describes three types of response patterns, immersion response, involvement response, and literary connections. Immersion responses consist of patterns of understanding, character introspection, predicting, and questioning. Involvement responses include patterns such as character identification, character assessment, and story involvement. As students make text-to-text, text-to-self, text-to-world and other connections, in addition to literary evaluation of all or part of the book as well as comments on the author’s style, they are implementing literacy connections into their responses. In order to increase quality and quantity of reading responses, students may be allowed to type or use other forms of writing to create their reading journals. This part of reading workshop is quiet and students work independently with limited distractions in order to read and respond.© Karen A. McDavid 2007
Sharing: After students finish a book, they may be allowed to talk about it during the last 15 minutes of reading workshop. To share this sense of accomplishment and introduce their classmates to good books they’ve read, students may read a passage or discuss interesting parts of books they’ve read. This increases the sense of community and builds “book morale”. Students may also create a presentation to share what they have learned from their reading workshop book.Minilessons: Teachers may focus on instruction at appropriate grade levels (without losing sight of other components) through minilessons on literacy strategies and skills. Based on the curriculum and the needs of the students in the classroom, the teacher decides what to teach aligned with the topic being discussed. This may be word-recognition, word-level strategies, comprehension strategies, and vocabulary (for examples see other tabs of notebook), reading workshop components, and text factors. The minilesson should be designed to fit the book you are reading and involves an introduction to the topic, shared example(s), provided information, guided practice, and an assessment of learning. Minilessons may be taught to the entire class or to small groups. Lessons on chossing the right books and other workshop procedures (such as how to write a reading log entry) should be taught at the beginning of the school year. After some practice with reading workshop, teachers need to incorporate lessons on drawing inferences and other comprehension strategies (see comprehension tab). Other minilesson topics include author studies, literary genres and literary elements. The lessons should last for about 15 to 30 minutes and teachers supervise as the students practice the skills. The students should be actively engaged in minilessons and instructors must encourage and scaffold student learning.
Reading Aloud: Teachers select quality picture and chapter books that are related to the topic being studied to read aloud to the class. This may include books that are too difficult for many students to read themselves or award-winning books that the teachers believes students should be exposed to. This component of reading workshop promotes sharing and responding as a community of learners. Teachers demonstrate comprehension, word-level, and metacognitive strategies through read alouds and incorporate the five stages of the reading process, which the students use when reading their books individually.
