Chapter+16

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 * Chapter 16 **


 * #1 What sounds challenging? **// This may have been a pretty challenging chapter for many of us. The thought of launching reading centers (or book clubs) no matter what grade level, seems ambitious, uncertain, and an organizational challenge as we are just stepping into reading workshop for the first time this year. Perhaps it is reassuring to re-read this from p. 323. “…then we launch reading centers in December or January. By this time, our children will have been reading just-right books alone for twenty minute periods, flagging sections they want to talk about, and then meeting with a partner to reread and talk about those books together.” This is a perfect description of the reading workshop, short and sweet. So knowing that the students will be doing those things regularly in reading workshop every day, does that provide some support to think about launching this type of work with your readers? What still seems challenging? What do you most look forward to after reading the chapter? What do you think maybe doesn’t apply to your grade level? What do you hope this instruction from the chapter will do for your students? //

Having done a version of reading centers in the past takes away a lot of my anxiety about launching them with a group of first grade students. Students always enjoy doing these because of the choice and peer involvement that surrounds them. What could resemble real literacy more than having students choose an area of interest and focus on that area with a group of like minded peers? Isn’t that what adult book groups are all about? I would hope that having students participate regularly in centers would give them a feel and love for reading and researching things that matter to them and sharing their findings with others.One challenge I foresee is having grade appropriate books to support the topics that students want to learn more about. I will work hard to build an appropriate library by buying books with my Scholastic points that reflect students’ interests as determined through observation and interview. I have also utilized our neighborhood library in past year, and will do so again this year if needed. It is so much easier to have the books belong to me, but I will use whatever means necessary to put appropriate, desired reading materials into the hands of my students. Stephanie Cooper

Chapter 16 from Bobbi Friend #1 – Using reading centers in sixth grade will be easier to plan than in early grades. I will use the regular reader’s workshop and add reading centers during the second part of my class time rather than doing partner work at certain times. My plan is to implement reading centers once a month for a period of one to two weeks and make them mainly genre based. I do not want to do too many of these units because it will take away from independent workshop time, but using them makes sense for teaching certain curricular standards. One of the main standards that I will need to teach in sixth grade that will be new to my students will be teaching the different genres of literature. Due to the complexity of these units, I will devise them using centers and teach small groups rather than in whole group mini-lessons.

I will be working with older students trying to find appropriate leveled books that they can read and might hold some interest for them. It will be interesting to split them up into reading centers. We will have to vote on whether the centers will be ‘Reading Centers’ or ‘Book Clubs.’ In essence, it seems that this approach is really helping students think on a whole different level, teaches appropriate use of language, and the artful communication skills. The challenge will be to keep them focused on talking about the book. M.J.

I would love to just copy and paste everything that Stephanie said! I hope the same things. I have said it before and I'm going to say it again, last year (my first year jumping into Reading Workshop) was the first year that I believe I actually taught my kids to LOVE to read. The LOVE of Reading. What a concept. I have always taught them HOW to read, but I've never fostered or tried to instill in them the LOVE of reading. THANK YOU READING WORKSHOP! The greatest challenge is having enough books on hand for the reading centers to work well. I will have to be creative as well to get books in my classroom. It is amazing to me how well my students did with discussing books and making connections between stories and authors last year. I know that this year I will be better, so I'm eager to see what this new group of kids can do! Keri Cooper

In my district there is still the expectation that I will teach traditional guided reading groups while the rest of my class is in centers. The centers are up to my disgression so I am going to have my classroom set up so that the students will be sitting in groups of 4 around the room. They will be reading but I will not be able to confer at this time because I will be pulling strategy groups which will look on the surface like guided reading groups. I will not be teaching to a particular text but teaching skills that can be transferred to any text that they are reading. From an outsider looking in I will be following all of the guidelines expected of my district but if you take a deeper look you will see kids doing meaningful reading in a reader's workshop format. --Jodee Tuttle

I feel that with first graders they aren't ready for reading centers at the beginning of the school year. I am going to do reading workshop and after much modeling and working on behavior expectations incorporate reading centers. The most challenging part I think is going to be when I need to move among the students to coach and confer with them. They are very dependent for a while and even though expectations have been covered and practiced they still tend to interrupt the teacher/student conferences etc.

I am excited to give this a try! This coming year will be my first year doing "Reading Workshop". I think that even at the Kindergarten level, kids will be interested and excited about reading books that they can choose... of a topic they are interested in. And, as Keri said, I am hope to really teach the LOVE of reading, too. That is SO important! I am also looking at getting more books on certain topics, once we determine what their interests are. I also loved the example of the Kindergarten teacher, on the bottom of p. 327, who gave her class wordless books to kick off her reading centers. Great idea!! Kari Bonnema

Chapter 16 from Bobbi Friend #2 – First graders may be more capable of these things than some older students in my opinion. The first part of the list, talk deeply about books, can easily occur when first graders are enthusiastic about books. Six year olds talk deeply about the things they love; when they love books they will talk about them! The next part of the list, encounter surprising things in books, can be found in almost every text they encounter because reading is such a new experience for them that many things they find will be surprising to them. Think about how excited we were when we learned about how Max joined the wild things in his fantasy. Six year olds will find surprises in so many books. The next part of the list, think about the craft of writing, should be occurring in all first grade classrooms as students begin to learn to write and are all becoming authors. The next point, envision the drama of the story, is a strategy for teaching. Teachers need to teach students how to close their eyes and see the story in their minds, using mini-lessons and strategy lessons to engage students in the process of envisioning. Six year olds are certainly capable of doing this. The next one, share responses with a friend, will occur on a daily basis in classrooms that are using reader’s workshop where partner work is an integral part of the process. Finally, pursue ideas, should be the goal of all teachers everywhere. We need to teach students how to look for more information about what they want to learn about, how to talk about their ideas with a partner, and how to follow their thoughts and ideas. I think that these are all attainable goals for first graders.
 * #2 1st graders? Really? **// On page 326 listed are the goals for young children based on what richly literate people do. “talk deeply about books, encounter surprising things in books, think about the craft of writing, envision the drama of a story, share responses with a friend, and pursue ideas.” First graders can do these things? Really? What would you say to a colleague who doubts that 6-year-olds could do this? What from this text and/or your experience would you use as supporting evidence that children are capable of this work? //

Wow! That is a good strategy to have six-year-olds using post-it notes to mark the parts of the book(s) they want to discuss. On page 330, the author tells us that the ‘focus centers’ “help our children know that readers read to laugh, get advice, feel less alone, learn about new places and people, be reminded of other lives, to take pleasure in something lovely, and yes, to get the tears out.” Finally, “Literacy and Life go together.” Something to remember!

M.J.

I think that Bobbi is right when she said some of the things are very possible for our six year olds to do. They are full of excitement and like to discuss their books. I think that talking "deeply" about books might be a challenge for some children. Some children come from homes where parents are too busy to even have conversations with their kids or discuss things with them. So they are verbally not as likely to be able to talk "deeply" about the things that other students whose parents have discussions about their world around them. They are lacking the prior knowledge to join the talk at a deep level. The craft of writing should be touched on by their teachers when they do writing workshop. There are so many good books to support these mini lessons. To envision the drama of the story, teachers need to be great models of this and to teach them the procedures to do this. Sharing responses with friends is something they love to do but need to have supervision and coaching so they stay engaged in their book talks. My students needed to keep this time shorter last year because they would tend to get off topic and just talk with friends. Ronda

First graders are definitely able to do "talk deeply" as both Ronda and Bobbi said. I have experienced that even when they are talking about their hobbies or things that they did on the weekend! The others on the list all seem possible, too, except for the "think about the craft of writing". That one seems to be a bit more difficult. Thinking about it is different than actually writing. I know that the writing workshop would flush that out more completely, however. Kari Bonnema

Something that stood out to me is how students, even as young as six, will devise a focus for their reading. I realize this will take modeling, but it is encouraging to read about first grade students choosing a focus and then using sticky notes to mark representative places in the text. The bulleted list on pages 333-334 seems like a great source of mini-lessons to teach/review in the week leading up to launching reading centers.I was also intrigued by the classification systems used by students in the example on page 333. Children often sort things into categories outside of reading so it seems natural they would classify the books in their reading centers, inventing their own labels such as, “quite sad, really sad, and really, // really // sad.” (333) This is a great idea to get students to find evidence in the text to support their thinking.Does anyone have any great centers that they have used in the past? In the past, I have elicited topics students would be interested in studying and gathered books to support as many topics as possible. The final choices are then listed and students create a list of their top three and I place them into groups. What methods have others used to create and place students into centers? Stephanie Cooper
 * #3 "Centers"? **// The reading centers described in this chapter are probably very different than the centers we envision in a primary classroom. Even though Lucy explains the differences on p. 322, “Centers, for us, are not places but are instead groupings of children. We could have named them literature circles or response groups or book clubs.”, that is exactly what she wishes she would have done. There has been some regret in the fact that they called them “centers” initially and in the confusion this caused. Needless to say, they do not call them this anymore. But no matter the name, as you reflect on the examples provided in this chapter, what most stood out to you about these young students’ ideas and conversations? What do you still wonder about the primary reading centers (or book clubs) proposed in this chapter? //

The idea of Reading Centers being book studies is very new to me. I still have the "word work" centers and such that the students used to do during our Reading Block, but now I call it our Word Work Block. This is where I work with kids in small groups with writing, spelling, etc. The kids are involved in reading, writing and word work during this time. It is seperate from our Reading Workshop time. Because it is seperate, I don't see incorporating the Reading Centers being a huge problem. It will take some organization on my part and some structure to our Reading Workshop time. I agree that the bulleted list on pages 333 and 334 would be great mini-lessons to do before adding Reading Centers to the Reading Workshop Schedule. I wish I had a lot to share on this subject, but I really haven't done a lot of this. Keri Cooper

//** Here is a place to post other ideas and burning questions from chapter sixteen, if any. (Remember, a high-quality comment in this bottom section does still count toward your total comments. So anytime the posts for a certain chapter don't speak to you and your thinking, feel free to share your own ideas from the text here...) **//