Reading Workshop

For many years, my students in both elementary and college classes have asked me about what to put on their post-its, how many post-its are required for each book, and what are they expected to do with them when they are finished reading. These are all logical questions, but they also reveal that students were not using the post-its for their own purposes, but were simply following directions to complete an assignment. As a reader, I don’t comment on texts or write in margins to complete an assignment. Rather, I highlight or code texts, write comments, and share these comments to help me make sense of and analyze the texts I read. Until our students understand the purposes behind these coding and commenting practices, they will simply complete the assignments we require of them and fill their books with useless post-its. Coding texts is simply a form of highlighting and commenting. When I have asked students to code texts in preparation for their literature discussions, I sugge...

A Reading Workshop 2.0 environment is designed to provide teachers and students with digital and web-based resources and technologies for reading, sharing, discussing, and analyzing children’s literature. These resources provide new avenues for breaking away from traditional ways of responding to one’s reading and new tools for accessing, sharing, analyzing and discussing what is being read. As readers encounter children’s literature in new formats and platforms, the basic processes of reading, sharing, discussing and analyzing texts will change in some ways and remain the same in others. Because of these changes, new instructional approaches and resources will be required to support the development of young readers in a Reading Workshop 2.0 environment. In the second half of this book I will share specific instructional approaches and lesson ideas that take into account how digital and web-based resources impact reading, sharing, discussing and analyzing children’s literature. Altho...

Readers learn to read by reading. In some ways, it’s just that simple. No one can read a book for you. Yes, they can read a book to you, but that is different. If children don’t see themselves as readers, and don’t see the purposes for reading, why would they ever want to become readers? We have to establish routines and procedures in the reading workshop that provide access to interesting texts, time to read, and opportunities to share what has been read. In addition, we have to stop asking readers to do things in the name of becoming a life-long reader that life-long readers would never tolerate. Asking readers to build dioramas, write book reports, fill in worksheets, or participate in round-robin reading simply needs to come to an end. We just need to finally say, ‘No.” In place of these worthless activities and outdated instructional approaches, we need to provide readers with demonstrations of the kinds of literate practices that life-long readers engage in, and provide instruct...

Here is a link to the Top Ten list I did for the Nerdy Book Club: http://nerdybookclub.wordpress.com/2014/05/24/top-ten-list-favorite-postmodern-picture-books-by-frank-serafini/

I will be taking a brief hiatus from posting Picturebook reviews until mid-June. I have some writing to complete and some wine to drink :)

Theoretical Shifts From autonomous models of literacy to social models of literacies From Web 1.0 (focus on consumption) to Web 2.0 (focus on production) From websites providing information to social media platforms From voices of authority (ie. Cliff Notes) to dialogic interactions (multiple interpretations) From in-class community of readers to global community of readers From institutionally generated content to user-generated content. Pedagogical Shifts From teacher as transmitter of knowledge to co-learner From response notebooks to reader blogs and social networking sites From in class literature study groups to online chat rooms and discussion boards From putting post-its in novels to digital highlighting and commentary tools From dictionaries on shelves to instant access to online reference materials From close reading of written text to critical, analytical readings of multimodal texts Textual Shifts From print-based to web-based and digital texts From written language (monomo...

Dav Pilkey delivered the keynote address at the IRA conference in New Orleans this morning. He talked about boys and reading, the importance of choice, Mad Magazine, and that struggling readers may love to read too, especially if we let them choose what to read. Great humor. His website is full of fun and information: http://www.pilkey.com