Questions+for+A.B.

How do you structure your reading class?

Structure of my day:

I'm going to keep this focused on reading. I have an hour or so for reading workshop. Within this hour, I use the basic structure of mini-lesson, work, share. Unfortunately, the structure isn't as 'neat' for reading as it is for writing workshop. There are a lot of other things that can and do happen. So my workshops tend to balance these things:

mini-lesson (based on a mentor text, usually the read aloud) workshop - kids read independently and I confer sometimes I meet with small groups sometimes kids meet with literature circles (book clubs) sometimes we're working on a shared class reading sometimes I have so much to do, I skip the mini-lesson! share/reflect/reteach - wrap up the workshop remind kids of mini-lesson and smart things they're doing set up the idea for tomorrow's lesson

I do not have the same things going on every day. So for example, if kids are meeting with literature circles, they meet twice a week during the workshop time. The other three times a week, I'm conferring. When lit circles are not going on, then I'm pulling guided reading groups twice a week. Does that make sense? It's all relative to what the instructional needs are for my kids. Does that make sense?

As for when to introduce a new strategy, that's a tricky question. In general, I go WAY slower with the reading notebook than the writing notebook. So I might introduce one new strategy a week. The kids don't necessarily write in their notebooks every day, so it's harder to move them towards independence at the same rate of the writer's notebook. But, by the time they start literature circles (or book clubs, as Lucy calls them), the kids usually have a good repertoire of strategies. Plus, when I teach a reading strategy that they already know for writing, it goes faster. So teach it first in writing and second in reading. For example, writing from a word. I show kids how to use that as a writing strategy first. Once they are using that strategy independently and have a good grasp of when and how to use it for writing, then I make the connection to reading. Choosing a word to describe a character and then finding evidence of such - or choosing a word that comes to mind about the book and writing about the connection thereby revealing the theme. (If this part is gibberish.. keep reading the book. It's in there somewhere. :D )

I hope this helps. Thanks so much for all of your enthusiasm about my work. I'm still working on an adjective article. I started doing a little research and now I feel like I could write a chapter on it. I'm such a geek sometimes!

