A Guide to the Reading Workshop, Grades 3-5

Learn how to teach students to read with increasing sophistication and personal engagement and how Lucy Calkins and her colleagues launch a rigorous and responsive intermediate reading workshop. Through 2 foundational books-A Guide to the Reading Workshop and Building a Reading Life-and eight online video clips, Lucy and her colleagues provide the strategies, lesson plans, and tools you'll need to lead strong, efficient reading workshops in upper-elementary classrooms. A Guide to the Reading Workshop crystallizes the reading workshop. After detailing the essential principles of reading workshop instruction, Lucy describes how to develop engaging minilessons that develop the skills of proficient readers. In the chapters that follow, Lucy presents different ways to lead small-group work and one-to-one conferences. In addition to describing the predictable methods and structures of a reading workshop, select chapters consider various ways to assess readers and track their development, how to use data to inform your instruction, and how to differentiate instruction and prepare for standardized reading tests. Building a Reading Life launches the reading workshop. In this unit of study Lucy and Kathleen Tolan pull out all stops in an effort to help all their students become avid readers. They wear a love of reading on their own sleeves, help students fashion their identities as people who care about reading, and create a social life that revolves around shared books; above all, they help students develop a sense of agency about their reading lives, taking responsibility for becoming the kinds of readers who not only make sense of books but also let books change their lives. Lucy and Kathleen meanwhile induct children into the structures, routines, and habits of a reading workshop.