For next semester, I am going to be student teaching in the 6th grade ELA classroom. I cannot express how excited I am but I wanted to make my last two blog posts about reading and writing workshops to refresh myself for January.
In the post, “Ideas to Strengthen Your Readers Workshop”, Ripp gives a lot of great ideas to include in a reader’s workshop. Something I love is having students keep a thought log they can use while reading or after. I am one of those people who comprehend better when I am writing it down. This needs to be an opinion for students. Right now, I have a student who is the same way and then she is reading, she writes down every single word to make sure she is understanding what the word is. I also really like the parent reading survey because it allows parents to become more involved in their child’s schoolwork. The final thing I want to talk about is the 40 Book Challenge. I love the idea of setting a long term goal and having this sheet is very helpful for students. It allows some easier reads like graphic novels or comics but it also adds challenging books like different genres the students can read.
The infographic on reading at home is something that I have seen before. My other third-grade teacher actually has this on display in their classroom. This graphic is helpful for students to see so they understand the importance of reading at home and do not cut themselves short. For parent-teacher conferences, parents can see the same thing and understand the importance.
From “Learning How to Teach Reading” by Atwell, I have noticed the importance of determining what a reader is and why it is important to be one. By developing these guidelines early in the year that we are all readers and have our reader rights, (skipping pages, not finishing a book, skimming lines) we can get students more excited about reading. It is incredibly important to give students a positive mindset when reading so that they are learning.
Overall, reading workshops are different for every teacher on what they include and what they teach but we need to have students wanting to read and more importantly, we need to give students time to read on their own. The only way they can get better at reading is if they read. If this is not a part of a reading workshop, we are selling studentsshort.
References:
Ideas to Strengthen Your Readers Workshop
Click to access Learning%20How%20to%20Teach%20Reading%20_Atwell_.pdf
Rachel's Mind 