Reading Workshop

We started our first unit of study in reading during the first week of school so we are now almost halfway through it. We are learning how to build good reading habits. Good reading habits include things like rereading to make our voices smoother, reading a lot, taking a sneak peek at a book to get ready to read, scooping up more words with our eyes to make our reading more fluent, and much, much more.

We are trying very hard to create a reading culture in our crew and help each and every one of them develop a strong love of reading. We have been reading aloud many books with main characters who love to read. You should have seen them as they poured over the Scholastic book order flyers. They were so excited to see new books by authors they love. Even the students who haven't yet developed a love of reading were pulled into the excitement.

We have been doing some one on one assessments with the crew to help us learn what each child needs to learn next. I will be sharing some of this information with you either in a Thursday folder or through a phone call or emails directed to a specific reading group.

Our reading workshop consists of a whole group mini-lesson followed by time to read books independently. Then we have a short partner reading time so that we can read with each other. (The crew isn't even aware that they is a sneaky way of extending the time that they are reading.) During our Exploration Stations, Ms. Cate and I pull small reading groups to work on skills specific to that group and there are many reading station activities for the students who are not meeting with us to work on including reading books on the TumbleBook app or the Epic app, reading in the classroom library, completing i-Ready reading lessons, browsing the collection of library books that I bring in from the public library and more. Below are a few photos and a video of us during some of our reading lessons and activities. If you get this post by email, the video at the end of this post won't come through in the email. You will need to click through to the crew blog to view it. It is worth the click! :)