blog : Revisiting the Reader’s Workshop

07/24/2011

When I started my teaching career in 1988 in Northern Virginia, Nancie’s Atwell’s reading workshop model described in her seminal work, In the Middle was revolutionary. There was one teacher in my school, Melissa, who actually implemented this model and her veteran colleagues with raised eyebrows were suspect. Melissa and I became collegial, especially when she discovered that I was working to implement reader’s workshop in my classroom. “Katie, there is a group of us in the district who are implementing reader’s workshop,” Melissa quietly conveyed this statement to me one morning as if it was an underground resistance group. “We meet once a month,” Melissa continued. I soon became part of the secret reading workshop underground teacher group and became convinced that this was the best strategy for building reading skills in adolescent readers.

More recently, Donalyn Brooks has reminded us in her book and blog by the same title, The Book Whisperer that allowing students to actually read makes the difference. Her students read 40 books per year, representing a wide variety of genres. As a result, her students score high on the state assessment in Texas.

Imagine that, if students read, they actually become independent and active readers. Here are some resources for creating a reading workshop where kids actively read and enjoy it!

The Book Whisperer Blog
http://blogs.edweek.org/teachers/book_whisperer

The ALAN Review
http://www.alan-ya.org/the-alan-review

The English Companion Ning
http://englishcompanion.ning.com

Reading workshop is a valuable learning opportunity for high school students too. We often think of reading workshop for intermediate and middle schools students. The reluctant and struggling readers that I know at the high school level have equated reading with failure. Their positive experiences with reading are limited. Reading workshop is a learning structure that would give students the opportunity to develop a more positive experience with reading.

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