Getting to Know Your Reading Self

I believe Lucy Calkins calls it, "Building a Reader's Life."  In either case, we also spent the month of September getting to know our reading selves!  I can't stress how important it is that children be given the chance to learn about themselves as readers.  Consider this:  when was the last time you were asked what books you like to read and the person asking really wanted to know?  Then...that same person asked you to set goals for yourself as a reader?!

This is just one of many questions I ask my students in September.  I also ask (Thanks to Amy Buckner):

• What is your history as a reader?
• What keeps you reading?
• What I know to be true about reading...
• Books I love!

We also set reading resolutions (A lesson I stole from the Units of Study), discussed how to read faster, stronger, and longer (again...Units of Study), plus learned and practiced the importance of working with our literature partners.

I am excited about the possibilities this year will continue to offer for my students.  I am choosing to embrace the Common Core standards as a way to deepen my instruction and to make my instruction more valuable!

As we worked through this first month we read the following books:

• My Many Colored Days by Dr. Seuss
• One by Kathryn Otoshi
• The Man Who Walked Between the Towers by Mordicai Gerstein

(I'm probably missing one or two..)

We are now reading the following chapter book by the awesome Montessori-trained Lee Wardlaw: 101 Ways to Bug Your Parents.  The lessons we have pulled from this book have been useful for both reader's and writer's workshop.

People have asked, what program do you use for your reader's workshop?  I don't use any one program.  I jumped into Reader's Workshop before it was the "in" thing in my district.  I read Amy Buckner and Frank Serafini in the summer.  I had just finished reading and using the Writing Workshop Units of Study.  I figured that I could do this for reading!  My RW is my own creation.  It is not a curriculum or a program, rather my RW is a framework for instruction.  I use my student's needs to select lessons and guide student learning.  That's how I, "get it done!"