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Favorite Books for Teaching Reader's Workshop
Favorite Book List with Links
Reading Comprehension Titles
- 7 Keys to Comprehension
- Guiding Readers and Writers Grades 3-6
- Interactive Read Alouds Grades K-1
- Knee to Knee Eye to Eye
- Mosaics of Thought
- Revisit, Reflect, Retell
- Strategies that Work
- Teaching Comprehending and Fluency
- Teaching Comprehension Strategies All Readers Need
- Teaching for Comprehending and Fluency
- The Comprehension Toolkit Grades 3-6
- Toolkit Texts Grades 2-3
Check all forms of reading implemented regulary in your classroom
Blog Archive
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2007
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August
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- Teacher Made Reader's Workshop Materials
- Materials and Organization: Questions, Ideas, and ...
- Changes for the Future
- Chapter 11 Synthesizing Information
- Chapter 10: Determining Importance in Nonfiction
- Chapter 9: Asking Questions
- Chapter 8: Inferring
- Chapter 7: Digging Deeper
- Chapter 6: Creating Mental Images
- Chapter 5: Schema
- Chapter 4: Settling In
- Chapter 3: Reader's Workshop-Real Reading from the...
- Chapter 2 "In September"
- Chapter 1: Guided Principles
- Reading for Meaning by Debbie Miller, Book Study
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August
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4 comments:
If one part of reader's workshop was the most important, I certainly think it would be the community that is built at the beginning of the year. Children have to be taught to value communication and what other children have to say. After all, there is but only one paid teacher (two if you're lucky), and a class full of eager learners and teachers working for merely praise alone.
Of course, I also think that this is one of the hardest things to teach. Often I find myself asking one child to repeat the thinking that another child has explained. It's frustrating, when they don't listen to one another. On the flip side, it's very rewarding to hear one child repeat something you've taught and another child rephrases it. There's definitely power in numbers and the classroom is no exception. If one child knows how to return their shelf marker and they teach two other children and these children teach two more...well you get the picture.
Every group of children has different strengths and needs. Our common bond is to improve our comprehension. There is no one right way to teach someone to read, but plenty of wrong ways. It's important to meet students at their zone of proximal development and give them the tools to take one step further.
I agree that a sense of community is the most important thing. I am working so hard to create it, but it is difficult because they just don't listen. They are chatting when they are reading, they are chatting when they are supposed to be sharing....it is just so tough. It is improving, but very slowly! I am going to start working on this by doing what the books suggests and mondeling what they should look like when reading and sharing again. We also need to work more on responding appropriately because a few of mine like to chuckle and make comments when others are sharing. I have told them repeatedly that I expect the best from them and I am hoping that those high expectations will continue to increase the quality of effort and work.
When building the sense of community I am also trying to tell myself that it takes time. It takes time to build relationships and trust. We just need to keep plugging away at it, since it is such an ongoing process.
What I like about having a community is that, as one, the class can funtion independantly. If I'm talking to a group of students or just one, instead of interupting me, they can ask others for help.
There is great benefit in having the students repeat what someone just said. So many students have difficulty saying a full sentence, it's good practice for them when they are forced to.
Community is important too because it teaches them to hear out what others are saying, instead of laughing or dismissing someone's question or thought.
I'm sure my class will be working on the skill of listening to each other for quite some time. At least most of them are listening to one another right now.
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