Rituals,
Routines
and
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Rituals,
Routines
Introduction
1
Routines
3
Routine of the Class Structure
The 60-Minute Readers
Workshop Routine
5
Opening Meeting: 10-15 minutes
Work Period: 40 minutes
Conferring during the Work Period
Guided Reading during the Work Period
Closing Meeting: 10 minutes
The 150-Minute
Language Arts Workshop
11
Reasons for Changing the
Class Routine
12
Further Instructional Routines
for Developing Reading
13
Authentic-Reading Activities
Independent Reading
Partner Reading
Responding to Literature
Book Talk
Author and Genre Studies
Rituals,
Routines
Rituals for the Work Period
Rituals for the Closing Meeting
Classroom Artifacts
23
Standards
Rubrics
Texts
Reading Folders and Book Bags
Word Walls
Charts and Posters
A Final Note
27
If learning community is important, it would be a big help
to identify the underlying structures that teachers and
students use…to make it all work…. Just as painters work
with the elements of point, line, tone, and plane, teachers
and students use ceremony, ritual, rite, celebration, play,
and critique when they make a learning community. These
elements are as old as humankind. When students do
routines and chores, celebrate, converse with one another,
engage in rituals and ceremonies, and give and receive
criticism, they are doing what is an everyday part of their
lives. (Peterson 1992, 13-14)
Rituals,
Routines
and
Artifacts
Introduction
Firmly established and practiced rituals and routines, as well as artifacts, provide the classroom management structures that enable you and your students to use class time productively. They also create a community that enables students to learn, move about the classroom purposefully, use all of the resources of the classroom efficiently, and be independent and responsible. You will want to spend
rituals, routines and the use of artifacts in lessons and reinforcing the lessons until they become habits.
The Readers Workshop functions with certain predictable rituals, routines and artifacts (discussed in detail later). Rituals are ways of conducting activities to ensure consistency and productivity in the Readers Workshop. Routines describe the overall structure of the class period. Artifacts are the objects,
crucial to learning in the Readers Workshop. Together they allow
students to be responsible for knowing what to do and allow you to use precious instructional time teaching, not directing activities.
From the first moment you meet your class, you will establish routines and rituals and you will introduce the students to the artifacts in your classroom. It is important for you and your students to know what, where and when things need to happen in the classroom. Rituals, routines and artifacts are the components students need to become a community of learners.
Students need ceremony, ritual, rite, and celebration to make a
community, says Ralph Peterson in Life in a Crowded Place: Making a Learning Community. It is not always easy to establish and continue the rituals and routines needed to form a community, but community formation depends on predictable structure. Peterson writes about the difficulties inherent in classroom life:
Life in classrooms is an intense social experience. For six hours a day, week after week, month after month, one teacher and anywhere from twenty-two to thirty-four students (sometimes more) live together in a space the size of a large living room. The older the students, the larger the furniture, the tighter the space. At best, it is elbow-to-elbow living. Sometimes learning about reading, social studies and math is pushed aside because the complex problems of living together cannot be worked out (1992, 1).
The “complex problems of living together” can be worked through, or avoided altogether, by establishing rituals, routines and artifacts the student can count on seeing and being part of each day. The environment becomes calm partly because it is structured and predictable; whatever trauma presents itself in the course of the day, procedures are already in place to help students handle most situations.
Routines
Routines help students know what they will always do in the Readers Workshop. When we think about the routines of the Readers Workshop, we think about two kinds of routines. The first is the routine of the class structure, the approximately 60 minutes a day that are devoted to reading instruction. You establish this routine and constantly reinforce it through monitoring and direct instruction. Other routines are the daily practices students will engage in as they work at becoming skilled readers, routines such as partner reading, book discussion groups, author studies, reading conferences, guided reading, and shared reading that support students through every stage of reading development. Through daily engagement in these practices, students develop accuracy, fluency, monitoring and self-correcting behaviors, and strategies for comprehending text.
Routine of the Class Structure
The Readers Workshop has the same basic structure, or routine, every day, which you establish deliberately at the beginning of the year and reinforce constantly. Departures from the
routine should be unusual so that they appropriately call attention to a special celebration, performance or event, such as a guest speaker.
In the Readers Workshop, as in the Writers Workshop, “It is important to maintain a simple, predictable structure because it is the work students do that will be changing and complex” (Calkins 00, 66).
Because the routine of the classroom accounts for how time is spent, a routine communicates what is important. In the reading classroom, students spend the majority of their time working on their own reading with your careful observation and guidance individually and in small and large groups.
Each class begins and ends with a whole-group session and has a sustained period in between when students read. Typically, the opening session is devoted to direct teaching and takes 0–5 minutes. After that,
In the Readers Workshop, as
in the Writers Workshop, “It
is important to maintain a
simple, predictable structure
because it is the work students
do that will be changing and
complex.” (Calkins 2001, 66)
students read and do associated activities individually and in small groups for up to 0 minutes while you monitor and guide their work and provide feedback. At the end, the closing meeting — another opportunity for whole-class direct instruction, discussion and sharing — takes no more than 0 minutes. (Of course, these times will vary with the amount of time per day you can devote to language arts.) This happens every day with only slight variations allowed. Students soon learn that they will spend most of the time every day in the Readers Workshop, working on their reading individually and in small groups. Students have no days off when they can just sit back and watch. Although they may have choices about how to spend their work time, choosing not to read is not an option. It may take some time to establish the 0- to 0-minute reading period. As with any important task, training and experience will be required. In fact, you might even want to fill every block of time with some activity designed to keep students busy and obviously engaged. It is very important for you and your
students to realize and emphasize the importance and productivity of having some independent-reading time every day (see the Independent Reading
monograph for additional information about the importance of independent reading).
Although it may take some time initially, establishing predictable routines will actually ensure that you have more time to teach. The opening and closing meeting of the lesson, when the whole class meets, are only part of the workshop instruction. During the work session, you can pull small groups of students together for guided-reading lessons that address individual and group needs. While the students are engaged in reading independently, you can move around the class, conducting individual and group conferences. Establishing the routines of the workshop allows you to devote focused time to fostering interest in and excitement about reading, as well as providing the kind of environment in which students can aspire to becoming lifelong readers.
The 60-Minute Readers
Workshop Routine
Opening Meeting: 10–15 Minutes
During this part of the Readers Workshop, you present a 0- to 5-minute lesson to teach procedures, strategies or skills. This lesson is the first stage in helping students settle into the subsequent work period and should be done as a group. The lesson can be on a reading strategy (geared to help students develop fluency and achieve greater skill in reading) or it may cover workshop procedures. At this time, you can set a focus for the day’s reading.
You can then dismiss your students to go to their tables or desks and begin reading. The entire lesson time, including gathering the students for the meeting and ending the meeting, should take no more than 0 minutes. Young students may sit on the floor around you during the lesson, the focal point of which will often be a Big Book. Students might engage in shared reading for part of the lesson. Older students can sit at their desks or tables for the lesson, which might include a class read-aloud. (Read-alouds will be done at other times, as well. See the
Reading Aloud monograph for more on how to effectively integrate reading aloud into your Readers Workshop.)
● Shared Reading: Shared reading
provides an opportunity for you and your students to read new or familiar texts together. The key to shared reading is for all students to have visual access to the text. Possible reading sources include Big Books, printed charts and overhead transparencies of poems or samples of student writing. Begin by reading an enlarged text aloud and then invite the students to join in the reading as they are able. You and the students will re-read the text, sometimes more
than once. With each reading, students take on more and more responsibility for the reading. During shared reading, you create a supportive learning environment that encourages students to try using the reading skills and strategies they know. During and after shared reading, you help students learn more about reading by choosing an instructional focus and demonstrating how texts work and how readers behave. You might demonstrate how to read fluently, predict what might happen in a story, monitor your own reading, figure out an unknown word, re-read when you lose the meaning, or employ some other reading skill or strategy. The demonstration of these behaviors makes shared reading a valuable part of the opening meeting of Readers Workshop (see the Shared Reading monograph for more details).
Shared reading provides an
opportunity for you and
your students to read new or
familiar texts together.
The key to shared reading is
for all students to have visual
access to the text.
● Read-Aloud: Read-aloud is a
powerful instructional approach for supporting readers and teaching reading. You or another proficient reader reads aloud a book, poem or article to the whole group or to a small group of students, modeling proficient reading of the text. The read-aloud (which may also be used at other times) provides access to ideas in language beyond students’ independent-reading levels. The book is usually more difficult than those that students can read alone. Read-alouds build listening comprehension, which supports reading comprehension and gives students the opportunity to listen to and enjoy a quality selection of various genres. Read-aloud may also be used as a think-aloud in which you demonstrate the thinking process of a competent reader as you read (see also Reading Aloud monograph for more details).
Work Period: 40 Minutes
During the work period, students have opportunities to read individually and with partners, to work in groups discuss books, give Book Talks, explore author studies, respond to their
reading, or work with you in guided-reading groups and conferences. After students learn — through procedural lessons — about what to expect from Readers Workshop, they will know how to spend their time during the work period and what to do from one task to the next. For example, they will know that after reading the books in their book bags or completing their independent reading (see the Conferring, Independent Reading, and Reading Folders and Book Bags sections of this monograph for descriptions), students should move to one of the following:
● Meet with their reading partners ● Meet with their book discussion
groups
● Begin to work in their Reader’s
Notebooks
● Log their reading in their reading
logs
● Begin a new independent reading
Because you will already have taught your students about procedures, you can let them know that your expectations for them include knowing what to do, when to do it and how to move from activity to activity without prompting. Students will want to meet — and exceed — your expectations because you and they will have worked together to establish the routines by which the classroom will run smoothly.
While most students are working independently, with partners or in groups, you should meet with small groups of students for guided-reading instruction or with individual students in conferences. You can provide small-group instruction that meets the specific learning needs of group members; because the other students know what to do during the work period, you should rarely be interrupted.
Furthermore, you will continue to guide students throughout the work period. You will not only directly instruct and guide students in guided-reading groups and in individual and small-group conferences, but you will move around the room to respond to ongoing questions and concerns and to check students’ progress when you are not conducting group activities or conferences. These are
the routines with which the students will familiarize themselves through consistent use.
Establishing the routines of the work period is essential to the workshop’s success. You must be firm. Hold students accountable for using this time appropriately until they are able to work independently and with each other whenever you are working with other students.
In the Readers Workshop, students will be working at different reading levels, emergent through fluent. Students will also be working in different groupings. Students may be working in small groups, in pairs or individually. This diversity works because you have taught the routines of the Readers Workshop. You hold your students accountable for knowing what the routines are and sticking to them. Eventually, students hold themselves and each other accountable for following the routine.
Conferring during the Work Period
Reading conferences are short meetings in which you teach reading strategies explicitly, assess comprehension, monitor student progress, and establish future goals to guide individual and small groups of students toward fluent reading (see the Reading Conferences monograph for more details). Reading conferences are also good opportunities to take running records to determine students’ reading accuracy and error rates.
For the students, it may be a time to tell you that they want to read texts in a new genre, ask for assistance with a reading strategy or skill, talk to you about difficulties they are encountering, or discuss a text they have recently read. These conferences are central to the periodic assessment of students’ reading progress and to the continuance of that progress in the most productive ways.
During the first several weeks of the school year, you should confer with individual students to determine each one’s reading ability and needs. Though the first conferences will be initiated by you, later in the year students may also request conferences, many of which will be informal. The
more the students take responsibility for their own reading progress, the more likely they will be to read beyond the classroom and for the rest of their lives.
The students should come to each conference with their reading folders and book bags, which are two of the primary artifacts of the Readers Workshop. The folders each contain a Conference Log, a reading log and a Reader’s Notebook. Detailed explanations of these components of the reading folders follow in the section “How to Maintain a Reading Folder.”
Reading conferences are
central to the periodic
assessment of students’
reading progress and to the
continuance of that progress
in the most productive ways.
Conferences may be as short as 0 seconds but are generally 5–0 minutes long. It is expected that all students in the class will have at least one conference every two weeks. This will increase to two to three times per week for students who require additional support. While the reading conferences are being held, the rest of the students will be working together in pairs or book discussion groups or reading independently. The information gained about the reading needs of the individual students will be used to form guided-reading groups. These groups will meet on alternate days of reading conferences.
At the conclusion of the conferences, students will have developed clear expectations and established future goals for their reading. These expectations and goals should be documented in the Conference Log.
Guided Reading during the
Work Period
Guided reading is an instructional approach for small-group instruction. Groups usually contain four to eight students who have a similar learning need. In this format, you will meet with the group during the work period. The purpose of guided reading is to allow students to learn and practice reading strategies while deepening their comprehension of the text and improving their reading fluency. Guided reading allows you to focus on teaching specific strategies such as predicting, checking, confirming, and using the visual information of print. It also offers you an opportunity to observe the levels of fluency the students have achieved and their needs in this area. Your role is to help the students read, think and talk their way through text at their instructional level (between 0 and percent accuracy determined by running records).
Guided reading sessions last 0-0 minutes. These groups are flexible, allowing students making faster or slower progress to join other guided-reading groups. During guided reading, you will first introduce a text to a student group. Each student
Closing Meeting: 10 Minutes
The class ends with the whole class coming together again as a group —preferably gathering in the group meeting area where the workshop began. The closing meeting is another opportunity for whole-class direct instruction that will tie together and enhance the instruction given in the opening meeting and in the reading and reading activities of the work period.
This is also a time when three or four students may share some information about their reading experiences during the work time. They might share a strategy that helped them in their reading, information about what they read or a response to some specific thing they read. If the workshop began with a lesson on what to do when students come to an unknown word, should be provided with a copy
of the text that he or she will read individually with the ultimate goal of reading independently. You will watch and listen as students read one at a time. Then have students read the text to practice fluency (which you will first want to model). You may also have students read the text again chorally to practice fluency. While you work with the group, the other students in the class are expected to follow the rituals and routines of working together in small groups or independently without interrupting others (see the Guided Reading monograph for more details).
The 150-Minute Language Arts Workshop
In a 150-minute primary language arts block, the Readers Workshop can devote 30 minutes to skills, possibly through whole-class activities. The remaining 120 minutes can be used for daily Readers Workshop and a daily Writers Workshop. The two can (and should) overlap, interact and connect; in fact, you should plan for connections. For example, if the focus of the Readers Workshop is on memoirs, then the Writers Workshop should focus on writing memoirs. However, students should receive separate lessons for the Readers Workshop and the Writers Workshop.
you might ask three or four students to demonstrate the strategy they used when they encountered an unknown word, such as looking the word up in a dictionary, using the Word Wall or asking a partner. If the lesson you began the workshop with was about making text-to-self connections, students might like to volunteer details about what in the text they were reading caused them to make connections and what those connections were. The closing meeting should, in part, be about positive moments, a time for students to share successes they experienced as readers. A special chair or space may be set aside for students to share.
At the very end of the closing meeting, consider directing students’ attention to how the work done today will help them move forward and how it will tie in to projects, lessons and learning that will be done in the next day or week.
Reasons for Changing the
Class Routine
After the routine of opening meeting, work period and closing meeting has been firmly established with the class, you can vary it for a specific purpose. The variation may be that you take more than 5 minutes for whole-class instruction or that the students have the entire period for their own work. Any change in the routine should signify something important and be only an occasional variation. Other reasons to vary the routine might include:
● Introducing an author or genre
study: When a new author or genre study begins, there may be a need for more whole-group activities. Learning about the author’s life, looking at published models of a genre or previewing books so that small reading groups can form will take longer than the 5 minutes normally allocated for a lesson. Usually, by the third day of an author or genre study, the class is back to its routine.
● Preparing portfolios: Periodically
during the year and usually at the end of a year, students will spend time reviewing and assessing their work and making selections for portfolios. During these times, the
Any change in the routine
should signify something
important and be only an
occasional variation.
on getting the portfolio into shape. You can work with individuals to help them make selections and you can clarify criteria in whole-group meetings rather than having small-group conferences.
● Celebrations and performances:
At the conclusion of a genre study (on poetry, for example), the class may spend the entire workshop reading and enjoying poems written by their student colleagues. At the end of an author study, panels may present oral reports about an author’s works. Readers‘ Theater, reading finished memoirs and visiting authors or other guest speakers may take the entire workshop.
If you decide to vary the
workshop, make sure your students understand the significance of the variation so that they may take full advantage of what the new learning experience offers.
The most valuable commodity in education is time. How time is allocated communicates your core values; in the Readers Workshop, the routine communicates the value you place on student work. Students know that they will be reading every day, that their work will be authentic and that they will have time to practice and improve their reading skills.
Further Instructional Routines
for Developing Reading
In addition to the overall routine of the workshop, readers have routines that develop accuracy, fluency and understanding of text. The procedures readers use to develop and refine their own reading abilities are the components of the work period.
Students participate in teacher-directed guided-reading groups and reading conferences. Students also assume responsibility for independent reading and partner reading; participation in Book Talks and author, genre and topic studies; and responding to books. These routines give students the
opportunity to orchestrate the reading strategies they are learning as they -become more proficient readers.
Authentic-Reading Activities
As you conduct reading conferences and guided-reading groups, students will be engaged in a variety of
authentic-reading activities. They will begin the year working on extending their independent-reading time and recording in their weekly reading logs in their Reader’s Notebooks what they have read. You should systematically and slowly model expectations for additional activities that students will
Partner Reading
Partner reading consists of two readers reading together, often aloud, and occurs most frequently in the earlier reading stages and grades. This
reading strategy offers students time to re-read a text and help each other work through a text that is slightly harder than they can master alone. As with independent reading, partner reading occurs during the work period. As students progress through the reading stages and the grades, the focus, frequency and time for partner reading will change. Partners are selected for a variety of reasons, which may include supporting the nonfluent reader, challenging the fluent reader and providing opportunities for Book Talk. be involved in as readers, including
partner reading, book discussion groups, writing responses to literature, and genre and author studies.
Independent Reading
During independent-reading time, students read material at their independent-reading accuracy levels of 5 percent and above. Independent reading allows students to practice and extend newly acquired reading strategies and skills addressed during the reading conference, guided
reading, shared reading, or read-aloud. Students maintain a reading log, which is a list of titles and genres they have read, and a Reader’s Notebook, in which they routinely note personal responses to a text or texts. Students engage in independent reading daily. Each student keeps collection of texts, separate from the classroom collection, in their own individual book bag. The book bags contain several books chosen by the student, often with your assistance. To ensure reading success, most of the books in each book bag should be matched to the student’s independent-reading ability. During the reading conference, you and the student discuss his or her progress with the books in the bag and decide whether it is time to replace them.
Independent reading is not to be confused with the 5 Books Campaign, although the two are certainly related. Independent reading is a core component of the Readers Workshop intended to help students learn to read, while the 5 Book Campaign is intended to motivate them to read beyond the class and to help students develop the habit of reading a lot in and out of school. Independent-reading books
Responding to Literature
Students will routinely respond to texts, both orally and in writing. Responses to literature often occur in the form of a whole-group discussion after a read-aloud. This type of discussion is more informal but gets students ready for Book Talks and written responses later on. Students may:
● Analyze an author’s writing style ● Clarify the meaning of the text ● Ask questions about parts of the
text they do not understand
● Make connections to events that
happen within the text
● Make connections to other texts
Students begin writing responses in their Reader’s Notebooks after much practice in whole-group and small-group discussions.
Book Talk
Book Talk can refer to either the sort of conversation that happens in book discussion groups or book clubs when students are talking about books or to a way of introducing a book (see the Talking About Books monograph). As a way of describing a kind of conversation, Book Talk can occur any time students talk about texts in
constructive ways, particularly using the comprehension strategies you have taught them directly. Book Talks allow students to make personal connections to authors and texts, demonstrate understanding of text, and develop deeper understanding of themes and underlying messages.
As a preview or review of a text, a Book Talk can be part of the beginning of a read-aloud session, of guided reading, of partner reading, or of a book discussion group’s agenda. The speaker introduces the book by sharing the author’s name, the illustrator (if applicable), the publisher, the title, and perhaps other titles by the same author. The speaker may talk about the genre or the main characters of the book or share an example of the author’s craft through a short excerpt. The Book Talk also offers a great opportunity to
These routines give
students the opportunity
to orchestrate the reading
strategies they are learning
as they become more
share tips on new vocabulary words a reader might encounter by pointing out specific pages on which the new words appear. The speaker may also include information about who might like the book, such as: “This book would really appeal to people who love sports.”
Author and Genre Studies
Choosing texts carefully is the key to teaching and learning the structures of text, which will help students learn about an author or a genre and study this work extensively and intensively. The author or genre study is
introduced to students in the opening of the Readers Workshop. Students continue to work on the author or genre study as part of the work period. During this time, students might continue to read works by the same author or in the same genre, discuss these texts with a group, do further research on the author, or respond to the texts in some other way (such as writing).
Rituals
Routines are the ways in which workshop time is structured; rituals are prescribed ways of doing things; or procedures. Families have rituals about what is served for Thanksgiving dinner; religions have rituals
associated with worship; a club may have an initiation ritual. The point of the ritual is that the activity is always done in exactly the same way. A ritual is a convention of a community; it tells the community members — your students — how to do things in the Readers Workshop.
Your classroom community will develop rituals. You may establish some rituals according to your own preferences and negotiate others with the students. However, rituals must be taught and reinforced in such a way that students internalize them. You demonstrate through a series of procedural lessons exactly how each ritual is to be performed. Students then follow the ritual until it becomes almost automatic.
Some typical rituals for the Readers Workshop include:
Artifacts, Room
Arrangements
● How the room is arranged and
used
● What students do upon entering
the room or beginning the Readers Workshop
● Where Word Walls are located ● Where charts are located
Opening Meeting
● How to participate in whole-group
meetings
● How to work in response or book
groups
● Where materials are kept, how to
access those materials, and how to maintain those materials
Work Period
● How to choose books for the book
bag
● How student work and oral
participation are respected
● How to read with a partner ● How to maintain a reading log ● How to request a conference
Closing Meeting
● How many students share daily ● Who decides who shares
● Appropriate behaviors for sharing. ● Appropriate behaviors for
responding
● Who brings what to the sharing
session
● How materials are stored at the end
of Readers Workshop
These rituals are established through lessons and often have to be retaught as needed; a detailed explanation of each ritual follows this section.
Although the routine is the same for all workshops, rituals vary from classroom to classroom because much depends on your and your students developing your own rituals together. The lessons that accompany this series of monographs offer suggestions for establishing and reinforcing rituals.
1.
2 .
3 .
Rituals for Artifacts and
Room Arrangement
The classroom is organized and functions in accordance with room arrangement, procedures and use of time. In an elementary classroom, certain places in the room are associated with the particular kinds of work done there. For example, you should designate a carpet or other specific space as the meeting place, and whole-class meetings should always be held there. Another area may be designated for quiet reading or book groups. You may have an area that contains all of the books for the current author study and related charts. Each center or area in the classroom has certain rituals associated with it.
The room arrangement of the reading classroom reflects the work students do in the class. Your classroom may have desks or tables. If there are individual student desks, they can be arranged according to the type of work.
Students need individual space for reading and writing. Some students are comfortable sitting on the floor to read, and you should consider allowing this. During individual reading (or writing) time, the classroom noise level should be low so that students can concentrate, but you may be conferring with individuals or small groups. Some movement may be allowed so that students can work together.
In addition to desks or tables, the classroom will need the following:
● A classroom library (some of which
is leveled and which also includes a variety of topics, authors and genres)
● An area for storing student book
bags
● An area to display student work
— bulletin boards or walls
● An area for student reading folders ● An overhead projector and screen ● A chart stand and tablets
● An easel or big book stand and a
You establish a ritual so that
students always have the same
expectation for entering the
classroom or beginning the
workshop.
Also, you will need a desk or tables with places for students to file work ready for checking, to pick up make-up assignments and to set up conferences. Additional artifacts you will need for your classroom are discussed a bit later.
Rituals for the Opening
Meeting
You establish a ritual so students always have the same expectation for entering the classroom or beginning the workshop. Naturally, the ritual will vary according to the age of the students. A consistent beginning ritual is important, however, as chaos at the beginning of the class period usually means that you spend valuable time calming the class before getting the lesson underway.
It is important to establish a ritual for entering the class early on. In elementary schools, the beginning-of-the-school-day rituals must include such housekeeping tasks as determining where to put backpacks and hang jackets, dealing with parent communications, taking the lunch count, and numerous other functions. An opening ceremony may signal the beginning of the school day with a song, flag salute or announcements
from the principal. You will already have carefully established rituals to take care of all of these things efficiently. You will also have another set of rituals to mark the beginning of the Readers Workshop.
For most primary and upper elementary school classes, you will have a designated place for the opening meeting. The students gather around you, sitting on the floor at desks or tables while you sit with them on the floor or on a chair with a Big Book, chart tablet and easel nearby. You may even describe or demonstrate the way to sit. Once the ritual is
taught, you only have to say “It is time to begin our Readers Workshop,” and the students will automatically know to go to the designated place and sit in the proper position. After the lesson, dismiss the students from the class meeting a few at a time. The students know what to do because you also have taught rituals for:
● Getting their materials — book
bags, Reading Folders, paper, and pencils
● Sitting at tables, desks or other
places in the classroom
● Beginning their readers’ work
Rituals for the Work Period
Students in elementary grades will have book bags in which they place books that they are reading independently. Their book bags include their independent reading materials which consist of:
● Books that are leveled based on
the student’s independent reading ability — “just-right” books (5 to percent reading accuracy)
● A couple of favorite books that the
student can return to again and again to reinforce comprehension strategies — “easy” books ( to 00 percent reading accuracy)
● Books that are at the students’
“instructional” level — books they encounter and work with in guided reading and then put in their book bags to re-read for practice (0 to percent reading accuracy)
● A couple of books that may be a
challenge for a student but may be of interest to the student based on topic or a favorite author — “challenge” books ( percent and below reading accuracy)
See the Independent Reading monograph for a detailed discussion about
helping students choose books that are readable, meet their interests and have purpose.
See the Book Talk
monograph for a detailed discussion about Accountable TalkSM, which
helps students use appropriate language respectfully while having book discussions or talking to each other about what they are reading and thinking.
Students can push desks or chairs together or move to specified tables for group meetings. The group meetings are always
purposeful. The groups may be formed according to a particular task (students who are going to have a Book Talk about yesterday’s read-aloud book), or groups can be stable throughout a project or given time period (a group of two or three students working to produce an author study). Consider how to accommodate all of these activities when arranging the desks or chairs. For a detailed accounting of
How Student Work and Oral Participation are Respected
How to Work in Book Discussion Groups
3 .
How to Choose Books for Independent Reading
Students should be seated in the appropriate direction to see and hear the presentation. A discussion may be facilitated by a clustering of students — often on a rug or the floor — at a particular place in the room.
It is important for students to understand how to be a good partner — they need to know how to listen to their partner, how to negotiate reading materials and how to report on and remember their partner discussions. The Partner Reading monograph goes deeper into an exploration of how you and your students can use partner reading to increase their comprehension and overall fluency as readers.
The Reading Folder consists of three
components: the Reading Log, the Reader’s Notebook, and the Conference Log.
● The Reading Log: The Reading
Log can be a photocopied log sheet where students record the books they have read, including the
following information: the author’s name, the title, the genre and the total number of pages completed on a daily basis (for longer books, the date will need to be recorded for daily reading).
● The Reader’s Notebook: The
Reader’s Notebook can be a spiral notebook or a composition notebook where students record comments and thoughts about their daily reading based on lesson topics. When you begin to teach your students how to use a Reader’s Notebook, you may be fairly direct, asking
students to focus on one particular comprehension strategy as they applied it to their independent reading. Over time, you will want to encourage the students to begin recording questions they have of the text. Students should list areas of the text with which they had difficulty, question about an author’s style, note genre characteristics and record reading goals based on student-teacher conferences. Later in the year, students will be able to complete their Reader’s Notebook tasks more independently.
How to Participate in Whole-Group Meetings
How to Read with a Partner
How to Maintain a Reading Folder
● The Conference Log: The
Conference Log is where you record information about the student’s strengths as a reader and areas where the student needs to improve. You will record this information in the Conference Log during the conference and share the information with the student. Also, this log can serve as a resource for you to share with administrators and parents so they may gain a deeper understanding of a student’s progress. As part of the Readers Workshop for your classroom, establish a way for students to request conferences without interrupting as you confer with individuals or small groups. See the Reading Conferences monograph for possible ways to set up conferring procedures.
Rituals for the Closing
Meeting
The 0–5 minutes after the work period signals a time for the whole class to come together again to share, tie things together and close out the Readers Workshop. Students will need to know and understand the rituals associated with the ending of Readers Workshop.
Some question to consider about the rituals associated with the closing meeting might include:
● What kinds of brief direct instruction
will you offer to reinforce the work done throughout the rest of the workshop?
● What kinds of questions will you ask
of the students to get them to think metacognitively about their reading and learning?
● How many students will share?
(usually there is time for three to four students daily)
● What information will be shared?
(this is an opportunity for students to discuss, with your prompting, what they learned about themselves as readers and about reading
through the opening lesson and the work period)
● Who responds to the reader and
what is the range of appropriate
4.
How to Request a Conference
● Who chooses the students who
share? (this will generally be you)
● What materials will you and
the students bring to the closing meeting?
● On which days will you use part of
the closing meeting to read small pieces of quality literature?
● How can you project to students the
connections between this work and the work they will do tomorrow, the next day, or even next week so they have a sense of continuity in their learning?
Classroom Artifacts
The Readers Workshop has certain artifacts — objects that are central to learning. Each artifact is a part of the classroom routine and has rituals associated with it. The following are some of the artifacts of the Readers Workshop.
Standards
The appropriate New Standards
publications — Reading & Writing grade by grade and Performance Standards, Vol. 1: Elementary — should be readily accessible for planning for the Readers Workshop because activities and lessons must be related to the
The Readers Workshop has
certain artifacts — objects that
are central to learning:
•
Standards
•
Rubrics
•
Texts
•
Reading Folders and
Book Bags
•
Word Walls
standards. Students should learn the expectations of the standards and be able to explain how their work relates to them. They should use the language of the standards to describe and evaluate their work and their peers’ work. You should use the same language when creating assignments. Teaching to the standards during lessons will result in classroom charts that students will refer to for help in remembering and understanding the expectations and the language of the standards.
Using standards to develop reading assignments is vital. While students are often responsible for choosing their own texts, you may assign a specific genre. For example, you may determine that the class will read nonfiction texts and create lessons based on the standards and strategies that are used to comprehend nonfiction text. Students then select nonfiction texts based on their own interests and knowledge.
Rubrics
Rubrics, a set of criteria for evaluating student work, are developed and given to students prior to completing projects. Students will know exactly what they are expected to do and how their work will be judged. For most assignments, the rubrics are specific to the assignment. However, rubrics should be based on the standards so that you can realistically assess your students in light of the standards. Rubrics should be posted in the classroom and/or copies may be placed in students’ folders and referred to throughout an assignment.
Texts
A variety of texts are among the artifacts of the Readers Workshop. The classroom library is the main repository of Readers Workshop artifacts. It will contain a variety of books in many genres and will cover a range of reading levels. Some texts in the classroom library will be organized by levels to facilitate independent book choices. The remaining books will represent many reading levels, topics and genres. Some of the books in the classroom library will be organized by author, genre or topic. These books will be stored together in attractive containers or book bins.
The Readers Workshop classroom will also house a collection of Big Books (usually for primary classrooms, but not exclusively). The Big Books will be used for shared reading and lessons. Sets of leveled books for guided reading groups are also artifacts of the classroom. Other artifacts related to texts include recommended reading lists.
Reading Folders and Book Bags
Collections of student work are
artifacts of the Readers Workshop. One of these artifacts is the Reading Folder, in which a student makes a record of reading progress in a Reading Log. The student records responses to the books in a Reader’s Notebook. Evidence of student progress across the year is recorded in a Conference Log. These components of the Reading Folder document student effort, interest and progress. Procedures for using each component of the Reading Folder are taught in lessons. As the year progresses, students use these artifacts to reflect on and self-assess their progress as readers.
Another artifact of the student’s ongoing work in Readers Workshop is the book bag (usually for younger students, but the book bag may be a useful transition tool for older students who struggle with reading). The texts in the book bag reflect the work-in-progress of the reader. Students routinely reflect on their progress in developing fluency and understanding of the texts in their book bags. Each student should have one to two “easy,” two to three “just-right,” two to three “instructional” and one to two “challenge” books in their bags at any given time. These books are selected by you early in the year. As the year progresses, students will have the opportunity to change the books as necessary on their own — after the procedures have been taught to them regarding how to change the books based on their individual progress, interests and assessment by you.
Word Walls
The Word Wall is an artifact of the Readers Workshop. Various Word Walls may have different organizations and different purposes but all are useful visual word references for students. The Word Wall is most often composed of the most commonly used words by the readers and writers at a particular grade level. These high-frequency words are organized alphabetically. The Word Wall quickly becomes a resource for learning, writing or reading problem words. Some Word Walls are organized around spelling patterns. Sometimes words are studied and added to the Word Wall using the most common rhyme patterns. Word Walls devoted to content topics or high interest words are also artifacts of some classrooms.
Charts and Posters
Many of the lessons and much of the class discussion will be captured on charts and posters and displayed for future reference. For example, as students work on comprehending a complex text they may chart certain literary features. Perhaps the charts will include subplots of the story as well as questions these subplots raise in a reader’s mind. These charts are posted and referred to as the reading proceeds. The posting of the chart or poster in the classroom places value on the lessons and the oral work of the class. It is a model for students to use as they work on individual reading projects. These charts are posted as long as they continue to support students’ reading and writing. Old charts come down and new ones go up based on the progress of instruction.
In A Child Went Forth, Jamie Carr writes about how rituals and routines make her classroom work:
I expect a lot but I know that the children will learn how to live in a classroom that operates like a workshop because of my high expectations and the caring community we create together. It takes consistency, focus, clarity of purpose, problem solving…and patience (1999, 36).
In the Readers Workshop, rituals, routines and artifacts help the students make the workshop function. They provide the necessary time students need to read because they no longer have to worry about what to do to read effectively, when to do it, where to do it, or what to read.
A Final Note
The rituals, routines and artifacts of the Readers Workshop tell students what we value and how we plan to support them as they live rich literate lives. The structures students are surrounded by will effect them. As Taberski reminds us:
The organization and look of our rooms, the materials we use, and the way we structure the day sends a powerful message to students and parents about our attitudes toward teaching and our expectations for our children. When we create classroom environments that are attractive, comfortable and purposeful, providing materials that support our work with children, structuring our time to support our goals, then we’ll surely reap the results of our efforts (2000, 33). Giving students the predictable structures in which they learn to read by reading is an important step in the creation of a literate population. Rituals, routines and artifacts teach students what they need to know to read effectively, when to read, where to read and what do read.
Rituals, routines and artifacts
teach students what they need
to know to read effectively,
when to read, where to read and
what to read.
References
Calkins, L. M. 00. The Art of Teaching Reading. New York: Addison Wesley Longman.
Carr, J. C. . A Child Went Forth: Reflective Teaching with Young Readers and Writers. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.
New Standards. . Performance Standards, Vol. 1: Elementary. NCEE and the University of Pittsburgh. New Standards Primary Literacy
Committee. . Reading & Writing grade by grade. NCEE and the University of Pittsburgh. Peterson, R. . Life in a Crowded
Place: Making a Learning Community. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann. Taberski,S. 000. On Solid Ground:
Strategies for Teaching Reading K-3.
Guided Reading Independent Reading Partner Reading
Phonemic Awareness and Phonics Reading Aloud
Reading Conferences
Rituals, Routines and Artifacts Shared Reading
Talking About Books Vocabulary
