Reading Workshop

Based on my theoretical understandings, I have developed a set of principles for my Reading Workshop. These principles are; 1) Opportunity, 2) Choice, 3) Response, 4) Relevance / Authenticity, 5) Space, 6) Faith,   and 7) Uncertainty. I use these principles to help me make decisions about the various learning experiences I provide in my reading workshop. 1.      Opportunity - In order to provide children with the opportunities they need to become successful readers, children need time to read, access to a large variety of quality reading materials, and a classroom structure that supports social interaction. They need time to browse through books and explore what they find. They also need the opportunity to discuss what they read with other readers. In essence, they need to become members of a “community of readers”. 2.      Choice – Children need to make choices about what they read, what groups to participate in and how to respond to their ...

Theory should help us provide the conditions, the contexts that will foster growth toward competent reading. Most important, theory should help us to avoid methods and strategies that may satisfy short-term goals but obstruct growth.                                                                                     Louise Rosenblatt As classroom teachers, we need to be able to plan effective day to day experiences in the reading workshop, however, we must also be able to make decisions about the learning conditions and curricular components we provide over the course of the scho...

Over the next few months, I will be publishing on my Readers Workshop Blog some quotes and highlights from my previous 9 books on reading, comprehension, and readers workshops. These highlights will help teachers implement a workshop approach to reading and writing in their 21st Century Classrooms. Happy Reading!!

The design, publication, and features of contemporary narrative picturebooks have been impacted by the digital revolution and the emerging popularity of digital reading devices. Digitally produced texts may resemble, in some basic ways their print-based predecessors; however digitally produced picturebook apps provide access to additional features, information, and types of interactivity that print-based texts may not support (Schwebs, 2014). Picturebook apps are sometimes thought of as enhanced versions of print-based picturebooks in that they offer additional content, features, and navigational options not available in printed texts. Readers of digital picturebooks must work through the presentation of a fictional narrative using physical, cognitive, visual, emotional, and embodied capabilities, among others. As picturebook narratives in digital formats evolve and become part of the reading curriculum in more classrooms, picturebook scholars, literacy educators, and classroom teache...

Serafini, Frank. (2015). Multimodal Literacy: From Theories to Practices. Language Arts. 92(6), p. 412-423. Using the above mentioned tripartite framework as a lens for investigating the nature of the multimodal ensembles that our students are exposed to in contemporary classrooms, multimodal ensembles are conceptualized as: 1) visual objects, 2) semiotic events, and 3) cultural artifacts (see Figure 1). This reconceptualization of the nature of multimodal texts from three different perspectives provides a foundation for the instructional approaches used to expand students’ interpretive repertoires. It is through these various lenses that we can begin to move beyond the literal or denotative aspects of written text and visual images to consider the semiotic and ideological dimensions of the multimodal ensembles encountered in today’s classrooms. Three Perspectives on Multimodal Ensembles Theoretical Perspective Multimodal Ensembles Instructional Approa...