Variability Not Disability: Struggling Readers in a Workshop Classroom

by Cathy M. Roller

Shifting the focus to ability rather than disability, this inspirational account provides readers with a new perspective and new ideas on the challenging, often frustrating, task of finding an instructional approach that is flexible enough to accommodate the wide variance in students' abilities. Author Cathy Roller lays out a practical, day-to-day instructional framework for working with struggling readers in a workshop setting. She explains the research supporting workshop-style instruction and shares work examples based on 6 years' experience as a faculty director of the University of Iowa's summer reading program.

160 pages, Paperback

First published March 1, 1996

Reviews

[Kristin · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a pretty simple narrative to structuring and teaching a reading workshop in your classroom. If you do not know much about the workshop method, or can't be professionally trained, this would be an easy read to get it going on your own. The author uses her summer reading program as the setting for workshop, but her structure could easily be applied in a regular reading classroom during the school year. She uses her 20 years in the classroom along with her own studying and training of the "workshop gurus" Atwell, Calkins, and Clay to form this book.