New Reading Curriculum

Hello families!

As we are looking forward into the next semester, we will see some changes in our reading curriculum, and I wanted to take a moment to share them with you. Our district is adopting a new, more streamlined reading curriculum plan. We will be utilizing Lucy Calkin's Reading Workshop format. This is a change that the district is planning to fully implement in the 2013-2014 school year, but we are all encouraged to try it out a little bit this year. I'm very excited about the change, so we are jumping in feet first!

In our classroom, we have been already been utilizing part of the workshop model during our reading literacy time. Essentially, our reading block will be 1 hour long, and will begin with a large group mini lesson each day. This mini-lesson will last no longer than 15 minutes, and will center around a skill or strategy students need to work on to become better readers. In the beginning of the year, the mini-lessons will be similar to what we have already learned. There will be a lot of lessons about HOW to read during independent reading, and accuracy strategies (you may know them as "Stretchy Snake" or "Chunky Monkey" for example!) As the year moves on, the focus will move towards understanding what we read--comprehension. Right now, we are working on a character unit, where we are learning to analyze what a character does and says. We will then use this information to make predictions about the text, and determine how a character is feeling, or even describe the character using character traits. These are hard skills and require deeper thinking, which is great for our first graders.

After the 10-15 minute mini-lesson, students will be engaged in a "work time," which is the same as our current "read-to-self time." During this "work time," the students will be working on those skills and strategies we've practiced during the mini-lessons, and they will be supported by independent conferences or small strategy groups. This "work time" will last approximately 30-40 minutes. At the end of this time, we will come back together, discuss what we worked on, and share what we found with our reading partners. Students are paired with a partner for reading who is at their reading level, and each day they will have time to share and teach with their partner about what they learned and found in their books during workshop that day.

Now, up until this point, we have been really working a lot in our guided reading groups. But now, since all of our students have made such huge gains in reading (some even up to a whole year's worth of growth at this point!) and nearly everyone is up to or past benchmark level, I've found that it will be more beneficial to conduct more individual conferences at this point. Conferences will last anywhere between 5 and 10 minutes, so I'll be able to get anywhere from 4-8 conferences in during our reading work time each day. A reading conference will consist of me working one on one with students to listen to them reading and do a "quick teach point" that will help that child move along in their reading. Since all the kids have such a great base in their reading at this point, having more individualized time with each child will help me to better meet their individual needs to really push them forward. As I meet with students and determine that a group of kids may need more focused attention on a specific skill, I will be pulling them into a quick small-group lesson focused only on that one skill. This will give them more guided practice on individual skills and strategies that they will then be able to implement in their reading on their own.

Guided reading won't be "thrown out the window," though. As I keep reading with individual students and see a student or two who are struggling to move up to the next level in the typical time-frame, I will pull a guided reading group to help boost those students into the next level. Once those students are "living comfortable" within that level, we will go back to focused reading conferences and strategy groups!

As for books coming home, the kids will still be bringing a book home each night. The only change is that they will be choosing their own book to bring home from their book bin. This book should be a "just right" book, but we are still learning "what that means," since we just began choosing our own books. If you are reading with your child and find they are choosing books that seem way too easy, or way too hard, especially if it's a pretty consistent thing, please send me a note to let me know. I'll be reading with them as well, but I might not see which books they are choosing to bring home. We're working on that independence, so bear with us while we are learning!

I know this seems like somewhat of a big change in comparison to how we were operating in our reading block earlier in the year, but I truly believe this will be a better situation for each child in our class. It will be a work in process while we're getting it down to a science, but it's going to be a great change, overall. The more individualized attention to reading skills and strategies will allow the kids to develop a much deeper, critical-thinking approach to reading, which will give them an even stronger basis for reading in their future! Please don't hesitate to contact me (phone, email, or a note!) if you have any other questions or concerns about these changes to our reading block!

- Melissa Wright

P.S...Our district is also adopting Lucy Calkin's Writing Workshop. We aren't required to start that this year, but we might jump in, once we get comfortable with the reading workshop format. From what I understand, we are already really utilizing the workshop format correctly for writing, so the changes won't be as dramatic!