Reading Workshop

Reading Workshop is the organizational structure of our reading instruction. It is a block of about 90 minutes each day.  It is an extended time for students to read, think, converse about books on a daily basis, as well as set individual reading goals and work on the business of achieving them! The main focus is to differentiate, or personalize, instruction in order to accommodate the learning needs of all students while fostering a love for reading.

The phonics block is 30 minutes of our reading time and utilizes UFLI Foundations, a structured and sequential foundational program that helps ALL students be solid readers and spellers. 

    Our Reading Workshop time begins with a whole-class lesson.  I introduce the Learning Target, read a text (poem, fiction, nonfiction, etc) aloud to the class and model a strategy in one of four areas; accuracy, fluency, comprehension and expanding vocabulary.  This portion of the workshop flows into independent reading time, which may include written responses to literature and/or students working on assignments related to the mini-lessons or Learning Target, plus small group work and individual reading conferences.

    Each day our workshop time ends in a whole class debrief, where we talk about our learning, our progress, our achievements, and our next steps!

   Our reading program includes Fountas & Pinnell mini lessons and books for vocabulary development and comprehension work. Our foundational skills are taught through UFLI Foundations. We also utilize Lexia for additional individualized phonics instruction, Heggerty for phonemic awareness instruction and Gentry's Spelling Connections for a systematic approach to mastering spelling patterns. 

    I have a large classroom library with books that span many reading levels and genres.  It is very important to me that second graders can make selections from a wide variety of books. Students will each have their own book basket on their desks where they can store the books they are reading at any given time.  In addition, I work closely with our librarian, Ms. Luchies, and once the year is up and rolling second graders are able to use the library more than once a week if they want/need to.

Resource for parents:
https://www.readingrockets.org/reading-101-guide-parents