At the institute there was of course talk about Lucy’s new Reading Units of Study books for grades 3-5. I’ve just purchased a set of the units for my school. To start off, I don’t think we will be using these books on a day-to-day basis as we’ve done with the writing, but rather, I see us using this set as a tool to help grow our current units.
One of my jobs as a coach is to help teachers see that we are never finished with our workshops or our planning. Part of being a workshop teacher is being reflective and responsive. Year to year, we will need to alter our teaching to meet the needs of the students in our classrooms. I’m not talking about large scale changes to our units or curriculum each year, but rather small, targeted changes to minilessons, teacher demonstrations, celebrations, small group work and conferences. The changes need to be based on bringing each child one step further along. The changes are quite simply, differentiation.
Lucy talks about the importance of reading workshop on a video on the Heineman website. If you are new to workshop, Teachers College ideas, or just need a little inspiration, check it out. (Top right-hand corner.)
This week Betsy and I started our journey to incorporate all the elements of a best practice approach to her reader’s workshop block: a minilesson, independent reading time (allowing the students to read, read, read and allowing the teacher to conference and hold small group sessions), share time, read aloud, shared reading, and word study. So far… so good.
Betsy and I spent time planning her new block before the break. The change was in how Betsy was structuring both her guided groups and her word study. Instead of running the kids through a center-type system which allowed one center to be a word study stop and one to be a guided reading point, we planned to have a simpler structure aimed at the kids having more time to read. (All the research says time spent reading is the deciding factor in reading achievement.)
The minilesson, including independent practice time would kick-off the reading period. From there we would confer with students and determine when/how to share. Allowing 30 minutes for a word study session would provide time to teach (with shared reading, read aloud and modeling) then students would have 15-20 minutes to work with words before a share.
Throughout this time we will be using the daily lessons from the unit of study: Using Prediction to Further Our Thinking based on Pam Allyn’s book The Complete Four in Reading and Writing for Grade 1, and word study lessons from Fountas and Pinnell’s book.
It was decided that I would observe Betsy teach the focus lesson; then I would model conferring with students in the independent reading time. We would pull them back to the meeting spot to transition into partner reading. I would continue to confer while Betsy pulled a group together for a guided reading session. Then we would return to the floor to share our work. Following that I would teach the word study lesson.
Debrief: We wanted to conference with students to learn what they were doing “in the field.” Instead of approaching the child and asking “What was your prediction?” We instead approached with “What are you working on?” then lead into a compliment and a recommendation. The amazing thing with this method, was we learned that most of the children were not using predictions. However, some of the compliments we did note were students: thinking aloud and picture walking, using multiple decoding strategies, and reading for a longer period of time than was originally expected. Anecdotal notes were invaluble to our learning.
Day 2 was the identification stage of the unit which is written based on a gradual-release model. In Day 1, the students were immersed in reading and told to notice if they were predicting. In Day 2, Betsy named what predicting looked like and what it does. For my part, I again modeled conferencing with students while her teaching assistant shadowed me. Finally, Betsy decided she would pull two guided groups after she conferenced with readers for about 10 minutes during the independent practice time.
Debrief: As we met to discuss the day’s work, Betsy mentioned she felt like we accomplished a great deal. The students read either independently, with a partner, and/or with Betsy in a small group for 30 minutes. In her small groups, Betsy was able to get to the teaching she wanted to do as well. As I moved around the room, Ms. F, Betsy’s teaching assistant followed me, listening in and reading over my shoulder as I conferred with children and wrote anecdotal notes and next steps. This was a new task for Ms. F, and it required she approach the children not so much as a teacher giving directions, but instead like a doctor interviewing a patient- asking questions, taking notes, and mulling over next steps. I applaud her effort to learn this valuable skill.
Today we flipped things a bit and I took over the teaching of the reading minilesson and Betsy planned to teach the word study lesson. Ms. F would take notes side-by-side with me as we continued to practice conferring. Again, two groups were pulled for guided sessions during the independent practice time. Laura, another grade 1 teacher observed the entire block and agreed to sit in on our debrief.
Debrief: After another successful day we reviewed the anecdotal notes and discussed how the children were doing. Today I charted 3 guidelines for the independent practice time which helped to focus their work:
At all times these guidelines were what the children were to be working on (in addition to their first day of guided practice with prediction). This focus helped with stamina and gave the independent time a sense of purpose. Laura, Betsy and I discussed different ways to pull flexible groups based on the evidence gathered in our anecdotal notes and even talked about using what we are seeing in the word study sessions to help identify children who need more support. Ms. F tried conferring on her own and helped students feel that this time and reading in general is supposed to be enjoyable.
More to come… a wonderful start. I hope my colleagues will add their insights to this post.
Our lower elementary school teachers have been working to refine our reading instruction. The inclusion of units of study for reading has provided a much-needed framework for our teaching which spirals through the grades. (For more on information, see HERE.) That said, we are now trying to make sense of how the “parts” fit in to our 90 minute reading block:
We determined as a group that we needed to “see” reading workshop in action with all of the components listed above. The result- I am going to work with Betsy, a wonderful, brave, and fantastic grade 1 teacher from start to finish on her unit titled: Making Meaning: Using Prediction to Further Our Thinking.
To communicate with teachers here and for others who are interested, I am going to chronicle our journey by posting daily blog write-ups. My hope is that we will make this process seem “doable”, while also modeling our thinking (which will change and improve) as we go.
You can follow our work on my blog December 6-20 (our school week is Sunday-Thursday).
Comments and questions are of course welcome!
Those two words can mean so many things to so many people. Add to that the consistent turn-over of teachers in international schools and the lack of consistent PD and training (due mostly to our turn-over and our distance from major conferences) then the different definitions of reader’s workshop become understandable.
At my school, a group of teachers last year came together to work on developing consistency in reading practices K-3. This group, called the Reading Team determined we needed a framework, much like the framework we have for our writer’s workshop through the Lucy Calkins Units of Study series, to make our reader’s workshops come together.
After searching for a tool to help us develop lessons, unit plans, and year-long calendars, I came across Pam Allyn’s book The Complete 4 For Literacy. This book was a K-5 guide for developing units of study which were vertically aligned and offered a spiral of skills we could build on grade to grade. After deciding this was the direction we felt our school was ready to take, we purchased the grade specific books from Pam for each level. (See those on Amazon here.)
These books have been an invaluable tool for developing our initial units of study.
The process we follow is this:
This is a work in progress which I feel is truly progressing. That said, improvements both to the unit frameworks themselves and to our collaborative efforts as a group are happening. If you would like to view a sample from one of these units, please click HERE.
One more thing… I have read both Growing Readers by Kathy Collins and The Art of Teaching Reading by Lucy Calkins. I am a fan, a huge, huge fan. However, because of where we are at my school (our zone of proximal development if you will) developing daily lessons from those books was more work than we could tackle. Now though, four months into this, I am able to see how those books can make these units richer. Once through this process we will be using professional books like these to raise the level of our reading units. The lesson for me though is we had to have a clearer place to start.
Not only has my school started a journey in writer’s workshop, we are also deeply involved in implementing reader’s workshop through new units of study.
Our work this year has been divided between the upper and lower elementary grades (with grade 3 involved in both). Beginning in August, grades 3-5 began a collaborative implementation of writer’s workhop using the Lucy Calkins Units of Study series. (Weekly posts about that journey are available on my blog or by clicking here.)
In addition, kindergarten- grade 3 teachers began working on units of study in reading based on the Complete 4 series by Pam Allyn. Although I’ve spent most of my time blogging about our writer’s workshop, there have been significant changes (and celebrations) in the area of reading too. So, beginning this week, be on the look out for a new series of posts detailing our work in the area of reading.
Comments as always are welcome!
Thinking ahead to our Essay Unit in Writer’s Workshop, I found this great “Essay of the Day” site by Jim Trelease. Some of the essays might be useful as mentor texts for students to study. Others might be better for teachers to study. Either way… there are links to a bunch of them!
As we move to Units of Study in Reading and Writing Workshop at my school, we have also moved to using real, high-quality literature as teaching tools and to stock our classroom libraries.
Last year we developed a 3-year ordering plan which plotted out how grade levels could order books to support WW, RW, and their classroom libraries. Our orders were placed with the company Booksource who would bundle the books we needed… bundles for Lucy Calkins WW, bundles for The Complete 4 in Reading K-5, bundles for high-quality classroom libraries, and even bundles for Everyday Math and Fountas and Pinnell Phonics.
These books arrived late, along with the rest of our shipment so we’ve been organizing them this week… and THEY ARE FABULOUS! Honestly, I could not be more pleased. Booksource delieverd on their promise. We now have beautiful, amazing, engaging books for classroom libraries and high-quality texts to support our teaching in Units of Study in both Reading and Writing. We will be placing our 2nd large Booksource order for next year before we break for Xmas.
Interested? Check out: www.booksource.com. If they don’t have what you need, email a rep and ask if they can bundle a set for you. I did, and it works!
