Reader’s Workshop In Action!

If you have been able to attend a Coffee with the Principal or a PTA meeting, you may have seen a presentation on our approach to teaching literacy, called Reader’s Workshop.  The Reader’s Workshop model teaches students to be good readers, beyond just basic fluency and comprehension.  By targeting higher order thinking skills, and having students practice those skills while reading, our students become deeper, more aware readers.  The analogy I like to use is one of food: sometimes we just need to fill our stomachs and grab a fast-food burger.  We don’t really think about what we’re eating, we simply consume.  But, when we go out to a nice restaurant, we pay attention to all of the finer details.  We notice the place setting and the appreciate the service.  When we eat the gourmet meal, we focus on the individual ingredients and how it all comes together.  We leave the restaurant with an appreciation of the experience.  In a sense, Reader’s Workshop is a way to teach our students to be appreciative of the reading experience, observant of the finer details, and much more satisfied with the text.

A Reader’s Workshop lesson is broken down to parts.  First, the students participate in a mini-lesson as a whole group.  During this phase, teachers give students the targeted skill they are to work on while they read.  The teacher will often model what he/she is looking for and there is some partner share to prime the students.  The next phase involves independent reading- but students are not all reading the same text.  Students choose books according to genre’ and reading level (often with the help of the teacher).  While students are reading individually, they will pause to make notes, either on a post-it or reading journal- again focusing on the skill of the day.  In a first grade room, it may be to record the “chat” the student is having with themselves as they read (thinking about their reading).  In a 4th grade room, it may be to take notes on their own personal schema or experience in order to connect to something within the text.  Crucial to the Reader’s Workshop is the conferring phase.  As students read independently, the teacher will circulate the room to confer with students on a number of things.  Teachers will ask students about their comprehension or perhaps what connections they are making while reading.  A teacher may ask what details (pictures, captions, etc.) in the book help the student derive meaning from what they are reading.  In this conferring phase, teachers are gaining a vast amount of knowledge about each of their students.  Often times, a Reader’s Workshop lesson will end with partner reading, where students pair up and share with each other their thoughts about the text.  

Now that it is November, I have seen the immense impact the Reader’s Workshop is having on our students and teachers. 

What’s happening (or not happening) in the parking lot? 
Due to delays with paperwork at the state architect’s office, the next phase of construction (drilling and pouring concrete) is postponed until the week of November 13.  We still expect to complete construction by the December 31 deadline.

The good news is we will be able to open the fencing to allow parking for tomorrow’s Walk-a-thon.

Walk-a-thon is tomorrow!
The walk-a-thon will be held tomorrow from 1pm to 3pm.  We will be awarding many double and triple laps throughout the walk-a-thon.  If a student brings in a gift card to assist our friends in Bennett Valley School District, they will get 5 laps punched on their card.

Kinders, 1st and 2nd graders will be brought back to the classrooms for their normal dismissal time.  Provided that a parent/guardian is with them, Kinders-2nd graders can return to the walk-a-thon and continue to do laps until 3pm.  

Have a great weekend,
Wade Spenader, Principal