Reading

As content areas involve more reading in the upper grades, students work on making meaning and gaining understanding of informational text. During Reader’s Workshop, students read independently after brief skill lessons that center around comprehension strategies. They practice reading skills while reading books of their choice, confer with teachers who guide their reading growth, and share their learning with their classmates. Through their two years in the Trailblazer classroom, students read genres ranging from poetry to non-fiction and learn skills to improve as readers of these specific genres. Mini-lessons include:

• Discerning main topics from important details in non-fiction text
• Making inferences
• Summarizing and synthesizing
• How authors use powerful and descriptive language