Reading Workshop
Reading Workshop begins each day with our whole class community reading a poem, a story and Mrs. O'Toole introducing a focus lesson. Each lesson is about 10-15 minutes. We will have several lessons on the same reading strategy using different stories. Here are some of our lessons: finding "just right" books, identifying elements of a story, asking really good questions, identifying genres and recording information in Reading Journals.
The children then READ,READ,and READ for 20-30 minutes. The time absolutely flies. During this time we read in small groups, as partners and as individuals. The children also learn how to record their learning in Reading Journals and set goals as a group or as individuals.
Our class reads a story or two from our first grade anthology each week as part of our balanced literacy program. The Mc Graw-Hill Books are the EGCSD adopted series. The stories and skills work prepare our first graders for the work they will do in Grade 2 and beyond. These stories and skills and vocabulary are the basis for our testing program.
Finally, we return to our whole class community for 5-10 minutes to share our thoughts about lessons, books, learning of new information or just to have a quick chat and record something new on our charts. The children also have the opportunity to self-select books from our classroom library. They are encouraged to read different genres: poetry, non-fiction,newspapers, fairy tales, and magazines. We hope our children become life time readers.
