Readers Workshop

Reading Workshop this year began with minilessons focused on purposeful reading skills.  Using familiar "old favorite" fairy tales, we practiced these skills alone and with partners and carried them over to reading groups, reading independently (Read to Self in Daily 5) and reading with partners (Read to Someone in Daily 5).  We moved from narrative and fictional texts in the first trimester to literary non-fiction in the second trimester.  No matter what type of book or genre we read, these foundational Reading Workshop skills are tools kids use to understand and comprehend what they read.

Reading bracelets remind us to tell the story of what we read and examine the illustrations for details of the story, furthering our comprehension of what we read. 

We remember to "add a pinch of you" by telling what we are thinking throughout the story, giving our opinion, making comparisons and connections, forecasting predictions and retelling the story events in our own words.

Oral Storytelling: telling and creating oral stories builds overall literacy skills.  Here we created our own versions to a tale about white ghosts that changed colors by eating different colored foods.

We may not be able to read every word in a published trade book, but we know how to read the pictures, predict story events, and look for sight words that help us understand the story.

Each sticky note above represents a daily minilesson and practice either through private reading or with a partner to support our learning.

To strengthen our sight word knowledge we created class made books with familiar repetitive text which we read over and over again for multiple purposes.  Here reading and writing meshed together... we practiced writing skills such as spaces between words, stretching our sounds in a word, using upper and lowercase letters appropriately and adding punctuation.  By using theses in our writing, our reading selves looked for these tools to help us read sentences with more accuracy and confidence.  

A key tool for early readers is using a pointing "reading finger" that touches under each word we read, helping ensure we read every word, read what we point to, and then work on reading fluently. When we wrote our books we checked our writing before the class on the document camera.

It was fun to write these class books about our classmates!

Once the 14 class books were made we used them in many Reading Workshop minilessons for different purposes.  For example, one day we focused on our reading finger accuracy, on another the focus was on looking for and reading sight words, or words we know in a snap.  Other times we practiced scooping phrases to increase our reading fluency.  We also made our reading match the punctuation.  By using these familiar class-made books, kids could concentrate on the new reading skill and not be consumed with worrying if they could read every word.  

Anther purpose of the class made books is building partner reading skills.  Reading with anther person takes skill building... listening, asking questions, working together... all toward the joy of reading more and more.  Now when kids read with partners, they know their roles in a partnership.