The Reading Workshop: Creating Space for Readers

by Georgia Heard

With so many different approaches to teaching reading, how can you make sense of the best paths available? If you begin with Frank Serafinis The Reading Workshop , you can be certain that each step you take will leave a lasting impression. By describing his day-to-day schedule and giving an overview of how the workshop operates over time, he provides a flexible framework you can adapt and implement to suit your needs. And by bringing his love of literature to bear on his instructional ideas, Serafini shows how you can help students learn to read so they want to. Serafini explains how various practicesliterature circles, read alouds, shared reading, and strategy groupscan be incorporated into teaching and how "preplanned engagements" can blend seamlessly with "response-centered" instruction. Suggestions for setting up a classroom library and museum, selecting multicultural literature and cornerstone books, starting the literature study cycle, and creating "shoebox autobiographies," "invested student discussions," and other student projects are accompanied by helpful charts, diagrams, and visuals to help you get started and keep students involved. Throughout the book, examples and vignettes from Serafinis classroom experiences offer vivid testaments to the effectiveness of his workshop approach, even for the most reluctant readers.

Genres: Education, Professional Development, Nonfiction

160 pages, Paperback

First published July 1, 2001

About the author

Georgia Heard is the NCTE 2023 Excellence in Poetry for Children Award Winner which honors an American poet for their aggregate work for children. She is the author of many children’s books including her most recent Welcome to the Wonder House, (co-authored with Rebecca Kai Dotlich), My Thoughts Are Clouds: Poems for Mindfulness, and Boom! Bellow! Bleat!: Animal Poems for Two Or More Voices.
She received her M.F.A. in poetry writing from Columbia University. She is a founding member of the Teachers College Reading and Writing Project in New York City. Currently, she visits schools in the United States and around the world teaching writing and poetry. She is the author of Heart Maps: Helping Students Create and Craft Authentic Writing and a new edition of Awakening the Heart.
-from georgiaheard.com

Reviews

[Laura · Rating 4 out of 5]

in italiano: Leggere giorno per giorno

[Heather · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a good book for ideas when you're looking to start a readers' workshop in your classroom.

If you get a chance to take a class from Frank, I recommend it. He's quite witty and will entertain you while teaching you how he uses the Workshop.

Also, visit his site for lots of book recommendations and great ideas.

[Amber Elise · Rating 3 out of 5]

Good for Back to School time or new teachers. A little too koom bay ya for me.

[Eileen · Rating 4 out of 5]

An excellent resource that I will refer back to for many years to come.

[Beth · Rating 4 out of 5]

Mainly for elementary teachers but some good quotable takeaway for middle and high school as well.