Subjects Matter- Independent Reading Workshop in Content Areas

This blog will focus on the importance of implementing independent reading in the classroom and some structures that will help facilitate this reading. Teachers often wonder if their teaching has made a difference as their students grow into adults, one of the best indicators of success is that the student reads not just what is required, but also for recreation. Daniels and Zemelman write, "So if we want this future to become reality, to grow the community of lifelong learners around our schools, part of every school day must be dedicated to independent reading. It's too risky to wait until they graduate and hope they'll develop good habits, some day maybe." This chapter explored the difference in reading to communicate and reading to learn.

Reading Workshop:
Classroom workshop is a tool that helps students to work on individually chosen topics and receive individual attention from the teacher. A typical reading workshop begins with five minutes of minilessons, five minutes summarizing article topics, twenty five minutes of reading and journal-writing time, and fifteen minutes of reports and discussions. There are eight benefits of independent workshop: "1. Offers students a wide variety of real-world reading in your subject, 2. It signals that reading and studying your subject is important enough that you're willing to give students some class time for it, 3. It can be run in short chunks of time, and does not have to involve extensive assessment, 4. Workshop allows the teacher to directly teach learning strategies of course content that through short minilessons, followed by immediate application of what is taught while it's fresh in student's minds, 5. It enables the teacher to easily observe students' understanding or difficulty with a concept, through the one-on-one conferences that take place during reading time, 6. Through a workshop structure, the teacher can provide students with individual support, 7. Workshop promotes student buy-in because it enables the teacher to introduce individual choice into the instructional mix, 8. Workshop enables the teacher to employ interactive student involvement as a significant element of instruction."
Conducting Minilessons:
Minilessons serve to briefly refresh an important concept that will be relevant to the reading they will do. Effective minilessons begin with the teacher connecting students with material that they have recently worked with, the teacher then reexplains the concept and models it, the students then give the concept a try as a group, and finally the lesson is linked to the reading for the day. A minilesson that is very helpful is on how to choose reading material wisely.   The teacher models the correct way to skim an article for importance and then the students get help skimming over their own readings. Another minilesson that is quite helpful is on what to do if the student needs help, but the teacher is busy. Teachers can't always help everyone at once, so brainstorming with students about ways to seek help if you are unavailable is useful. Ask students to ask other students for help, or write their questions in a journal, look up words that are confusing in the dictionary, all of these tips can help guide students when they feel loss. The final minilesson that the book suggests is on how to ask for help in a conference with a teacher. Many students have difficulty expressing a sense of being lost, but by modeling the questions that will be asked of them during conferences as well as helpful responses then students can learn what to expect.
Keeping Students on Track During Reading Time
Creative classroom management is the key to successful independent reading time. Teachers can begin by asking each student to share what book they are reading, the teacher then writes the student's name and chosen book on the board which makes the student feel contracted into the reading. Starting workshops out like this also helps teachers identify students that are confused so that they can conference and help them first.
Conducting One-on-One Conferences During Reading Time
Teachers should begin the student conferences by asking the student to summarize the main idea from the material they have read or ask questions to assess their needs. The teacher should then ask the student what help they want of them and then respond briefly and teach one concept. It is important to keep conferences short so that the student feels confident not burdened with information. It is also important for the teacher to go to the students desks rather than have the students go to the teachers desk because if keeps the teachers presence in the room known. Conferences are also a great way for teachers to identify that an entire group of students does not understand something, if this is the case the teacher can take a break from individual conferences and cover the confusing topic with the class as a whole.
Recording Your Observations of Students Reading and Understanding:
Although meeting with all the students can be helpful it is important create a method that allows you to keep track of the myriad of information each of your students has about an issue. One way to keep both teachers and students organized is to have students create folders that contain their work and forms that summarize their progress. After each conference with a student teachers can write down what was discussed and the learning progress that was made on a sticky note and at the end of the day transfer each note to a log of each student that way continuous developments can be documented. Organization is key to understanding.
Making Student Sharing and Presentations Really Work
Many times with classroom group work one person will speak for an entire group which teaches some of the other students that their opinions will be expressed for them, in order to create a better learning community it is important for teachers to express to students that class members will need to respond and ask questions in regards to the presentation and that each group member must answer.
If we want students to read outside of the classroom and improve their communication skills we need to provide the time in the classroom to allow them to develop the necessary skills, independent reading workshops are great ways to engage student learning. Until next time...