Reading Workshop Continuum

Reading Workshop this year began with mini-lessons focused on purposeful reading skills. Using familiar "old favorite" and fairy tales, we learned strategies for private reading and partner reading, carrying them over to more formalized reading groups.  During our literacy block we follow a structure known as The Daily Five.  Students use these same reading strategies when 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 texts 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.  We continue to use them now as Super Readers who can solve reading problems confidently.

"Anchor Charts" made with reading strategy post-it notes are used to introduce a tool, gradually adding more and referenced almost daily in newer lessons.

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.

We may not be able to read every word in a published trade book, but we know how to "read the illustrations," predict story events, describe the action we see to help understand what the author is writing about. 

We look for words that match the illustrations and sight words that help us understand the story or nonfiction book.

We practice reading like a teacher; instructing what we have learned about a text.

We practice storytelling fluency; making our voice match the intent of the character.

Reading like a teacher, listening and asking questions of the "teacher reader."

Punctuation is a tool for writers and readers... here we mesh learning how to write and read a sentence, closing it with a punctuation mark.  This tells the reader the intention behind a sentence and how to read it with the appropriate emphasis.

As we learn to recognize familiar sight words and the structure of a sentence, we use our reading finger to keep pace with the exact words on a page.

Reading and writing connect... learning to keep spaces between words helps us read individual words, matching our pointing to the exact words.  We created class made books with repetitive text, reading them multiple times for various purposes.  This helps strengthen more reading and writing skills...stretching all the sounds in a word, using upper and lowercase letters, spelling sight words exactly, and adding punctuation.

Sight words are a powerful tool for increasing reading accuracy... but most importantly for kindergarteners, recognizing sight words automatically builds confidence!