Reader's Workshop

Our literacy block takes up most of our morning. We start about 8:35 and go till 11am with snack and recess mixed in too. We start with word work, have reader's workshop, snack and recess, then literacy stations. My favorite part is definitely reader's workshop.

I have always used the workshop model, even when I taught three year olds. It is so easy and beneficial to the students. Mini lessons we cover include basic reader's workshop set up, to discussing inferring, prediction, and comparison about text.  After the lesson the children take their bags of books and poetry folders to a spot in the classroom. Their bag of books are made up of leveled reader's and paper emergent reader's we have done as a class. Their poetry folder holds all the songs and poems we have learned over the year.

After our read aloud, discussion, and response to the prompt we start our independent reading. Yes, we do this on day 1 of school. Is it perfect NO! But they learn my expectations quickly and I hold them to these all year.

Each day a different color bag of books changes their leveled books. I tell my children their level and teach them how to do this independently. This gives me time to get the rest of the class settled before pulling these students for one on one reading.

Children may sit where ever they would like and read with whom ever they like, provided they make good choices. The children may read with another child and we spend many lessons talking about what reading with a partner looks like (eyes on book) and sounds like (talking about book, making connections, sounding out words, and reading with pointing fingers).

Once settled, I pull the children who changed books to read one on one. During this time I complete running records, adjust leveled reader's, and assess sight word knowledge. Typically I get through 3-4 children.

After approx. 20 mins we clean up and have snack. 

I do have a literacy curriculum, we use Scott Foresman. I like the way they introduce grammar components, but I hate that they are letter of the week. We typically do this during our literacy mini lesson, but occasionally the book is super high quality and works for a reader's workshop lesson.

Often we don't have time to share and discuss as is typical workshop model, which I wish we did, but we often do so much discuss about our class book, we are discussed out.