Reading/Writing
Readers' workshop begins with all of the children gathered in the meeting area for a mini lesson. Every mini lesson is short and has a point that we want to get across, all of which are designed to teach children to be good readers. Good readers read "just right books" and reread sections that don't make sense in the first reading. We explicitly teach word solving and comprehension strategies. After the day's mini lesson, the children go to their special reading spots, where they read independently. We confer with individual students, keeping close track of individual student progress and teaching individual strategies in the areas needed. Each child will also be part of a small group that meets to read a book together to encourage vibrant dialog and in-depth discussion.
Examples of mini-lessons:
- What do you do when you come to a word you don't know?
- How do you pick a book that is "just right" for you?
- How do you figure out who is doing the talking in a text?
In writers' workshop the children write about topics they choose. We help them to think about events, activities, people or places they know well and topics they are interested in. They use these to generate a list of "seed ideas." The children share their stories with friends to get suggestions. At certain times during the year we also have author's shares. This is a time when children can share their works-in-progress with the whole class to get feedback. Teachers confer individually to help both with story construction and with the mechanics of writing at the level at which the child is working.
Whole class mini-lessons focus on many aspects of writing, such as:
- How to edit for spelling, grammar and punctuation
- Developing a bank of common sight words
- Brainstorming ideas for what to write about
- How to write about important things in your life
- What to do when you're stuck in your writing
- How to add detail to a story
- How to come up with a title
- How to capture the detail of pictures with words
Some of the major writing units we cover during the year are:
- Writing true stories from your life
- Keeping a Journal
- Poetry
- Guided Fiction Study (i.e. Trickster Tales)