Reading Writing Workshop
Our school will be moving into the Reading/Writing Workshop style of teaching. This means that all Reading teachers and English teachers will now be teaching both subjects. The philosophy of Workshop is different from the traditional way of teaching. It is very much centered on independent choice in reading and independent choice of writing. There are three basic components to a workshop lesson. These components are a mini-lesson in which all students are gathered in the meeting area, independent reading or independent writing also referred to as activity time, and gathering to close the lesson and share work that has been done. Although the students have choice of independent reading, they still need guidance on book choice. The above referenced books provide for a variety of stories in which each student should find at least one, if not more, books of interest. In addition each of the stories and the subsequent lesson regarding writing can be placed into a mini-lesson. The idea of the mini-lesson is that just one strategy or topic is addressed at a time in the form of a ten minute lesson. The students then take that one strategy or concept and go off to do the independent reading or independent writing and apply that concept to their own work. In alignment with this change, I believe this curriculum unit will be ideal for teaching readers and writers as one entity.
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