Back to School and Back to Blogging!

I have been absent for several months, yep...I can admit it!  Things really got away from me with work, kids, dance competition, graduate work, etc... I really had to stop blogging.  But I'm back and my reading workshop is also back!

I'm really excited to get back to reading with my kiddos, and working in our reading workshop each day.  I've been focused on setting up the workshop for the past few days; I've been planning for the year, setting up the scope and sequence and picking books for read aloud.

For now, I'm going to write about the books I use to set up my reader's workshop and tell what I love about them.  By no means is this the complete list, I have others I use as well, and other books I've read over the years that have led me to where I'm working today!

Let me begin by saying that working in literature circles/book clubs got me started in reading workshop.  My book club program was already in full swing, humming along nicely, when I realized that my students needed a new format for whole group reading instruction.  Using book clubs and having "centers" wasn't working well and I felt as if we were fragmented as a class when it came to strategies.  That's when I started researching the method of reading workshop.

The following resources have been my guides in reader's workshop:

• Day-to-Day Assessment in the Reading Workshop by Franki Sibberson and Karen Szymusiak
• (useful for strategy lessons and small group instruction)
• Lessons in Comprehension by Frank Serafini
• (Comprehension lessons)
• Around the Reading Workshop in 180 Days by Frank Serafini with Suzette Serafini-Youngs
• (I use this for research on structure, forms for the workshop, a month-by-month plan, mini-lessons)
• Reading Essentials by Regie Routman
• (This book has wonderful notes on the usefulness of assessment feedback, and a GREAT section on conferring!)
• Mosaic of Thought by Ellin Oliver Keene and Susan Zimmermann
• (Comprehension mini-lessons!)
• Comprehension Connections by Tanny McGregor
• (Strategy instruction focus.  Her ideas for introducing each strategy are amazing!)
• Comprehension & Collaboration by Stephanie Harvey and Harvey Daniels
• (I use this most for inquiry circles research and apply that most often to my content area instruction and research.  It's a great way to teach non-fiction reading strategies within the context of REAL work.)
• Notebook Connections by Aimee Buckner
• (I use this for workshop structure, strategy instruction, the first month [unit] of the workshop...)
• Engaging Adolescent Learners by Releah Cossett Lent
• (An excellent resource for content area instruction, with excellent strategy examples.  This book is actually a text I use for my GVSU graduate students.  It's a GREAT book!)
• Solutions for Reading Comprehension by Linda Hoyt, Kelly David, Jane Olson, and Kelly Boswell
• (I use this book as a resource for small groups, especially for working in intervention groups for "striving learners.")
• Conferring with Readers by Jennifer Serravallo & Gravity Goldberg
• (A focus on conferring...excellent resource.)

Finally, I also use several web resources, including the teacher's college site.  Click on their "resources" tab, it's amazing!  (http://tc.readingandwritingproject.com)

Happy Reading!

Amy

When we talk about writing good summaries, which we do often, we refer to the following chart.  Writing summaries and giving oral summaries are a big focus for us this year!  I have found my students are able to give more succinct, yet thorough summaries when we follow this chart.  All students have this chart copied into their reading journals!

A few thoughts on structure

As I begin my Reader's Workshop each morning I have a firm structure that I use to begin EACH day.  Let me explain:

My students come to the meeting space (a rug near my easel and rocking chair) with three things:  their reading folder, reading journal, and a pencil.  I don't allow them to bring their books for one simple reason.  They read instead of listen to the lesson!  :)  Imagine telling your students NOT to read, but sometimes it's necessary.

Students sit next to their literature partners, without exception.  This person is the workshop "turn and talk" partner.    I have assigned them partners, thinking of reading levels, attention concerns, genre interests, etc.  Some partners switch often, but I have a few that are static.  It all depends on the needs of the readers.

All students must be able to see the easel.  They occasionally take notes or copy anchor notes into their reading journal.

Journals:  Notes go in the back, work goes in the front.

This is how we start each day:

• Students come in when the bell rings and begin the day's morning message.  This could be a math review, question generating task, or content area prompt.
• After 5-10 minutes of work (during which time they must also make their lunch choice, turn in lunch money and library books, etc...the usual morning routine tasks) students do a "Fit with Fred" warm-up.
• We are now 15 minutes into the day.  After FWF, students take out their reader's workshop materials, find their partner, sit down, and the lesson begins!

Please let me know if you have questions, another way of starting or organizing your workshop, or ideas to share!

All mini-lessons are approximately 12-15 minutes in length or less.

Welcome MRA attendees!

I want to begin this post by saying thank you to everyone that attended my Michigan Reading Association presentation on the Reader's Workshop method.  I strongly believe in this method and hope to help and encourage other teachers interested in running a reader's workshop in their classroom.

For MRA attendees, the following handout link will take you to the handout I ran out of on Sunday.  Sorry!  Within the next week or so I will add several posts to this blog, all addressing components of the reader's workshop.  I strongly encourage you to also check out the following:

• http://www.frankserafini.com/
• http://www.choiceliteracy.com/public/main.cfm
• http://www.readwritethink.org/

To follow most efficiently, please click on the "follow" link to the right of this post.  If you have questions about my use of the Reader's Workshop method, feel free to send me an email (croperr@gmail.com) or comment on this post!

The Hunger Games

I just posted on my classroom blog about 4th grader's reading The Hunger Games.  Some of you exploring Reader's Workshop might be interested in my comments.

Thanks for reading!

Amy

Today we have a guest post...

What I like about Mrs.Perrien’s readers workshop structure and lessons…

I like the strategies we use to respond to our reading. Some are hard, but some are easy. You can choose to be challenged, or choose to just take a break. Something else that helps my class understand the strategies is how Mrs. Perrien presents them to us. She gives us a whole example about what the new strategy is. She makes it easy for all of us to learn, and trust me, my class needs to learn in so many different ways.

I also like the non-fiction lessons we have. We do a hands-on activity with magazines. Mrs. Perrien gives us a list of questions that we need to find in the magazine. We have so many different questions we can ask which gives us a little freedom to do what we want to in our “non-fiction coding.” We then read our question out loud to our class and hopefully they may have an answer. If not, the question remains to be found…

A third thing I like about our reading workshop structure is how we compare our writing to our reading. That helps us improve on our writing and our responses. It helps our responses because we can respond with a comparison, our book, to our writing, which we call “text-to-self.” It helps our writing because we know what, and what not, to do when we write our stories.

Lastly, the fourth thing I like about Mrs. Perrien’s readers workshop is our genre focuses. We choose a genre from a hat and that’s the genre we will either study or do a huge project on. I like how we have to study each genre so we can learn more about it. I also like this idea because it forces us to vary what we are reading. I like it when I don’t read the same genre books all the time. I like my books to be different.

So although I like so many different things in our reading workshop I have to stop at these 4. I really enjoy reading in Mrs. Perrien’s classroom!

 -Natalie

Reading Non-Fiction

I will start this post by admitting that I didn't plan my literacy instruction very well for January!  Although we are reading non-fiction, we are writing poetry.  Yeah, yeah...we should be reading AND writing non-fiction...but it's working out because the students feel refreshed every day we approach writer's workshop.  They have been so excited about writing poetry!

In the Reader's Workshop we are working on non-fiction text features (some call it conventions).  Here's a sampling of the work we are doing:

While the 5th graders have been creating "show and tell" projects about various text features, the 4th graders are creating these dynamic and fun booklets of features.  We've been using our National Geographic Explorer magazines to find the pictures and examples.  We write the definitions together as a group after we'd studied and learned about the individual feature.

At the same time we are using non-fiction articles to learn more about types of print in non-fiction as well as practicing our strategies of questioning, metacognition, visualizing, schema, and determining importance in text.  My students are becoming non-fiction experts!  :)

For teachers looking to "beef up" or improve their non-fiction lessons, check out this Scholastic link:  http://www.scholastic.com/teachers/article/teaching-nonfiction.  I have found some really useful tips at this site.

Finally, a special thanks to Laine, a 4th grader in my classroom.  She let me photograph her features booklet!