West Virginia Council for Teachers of English Conference Proposal 2020

Session Title: Student Choice and Student Voice: New Ways to Use Reader’s Workshop

Presenters: Abby Waldorf and Allyson Perry

Short Session Description: Do you want to motivate students to read while simultaneously
challenging them to engage with texts? In this session, we will explore practical ways to
incorporate Reader’s Workshop into instruction while still leaving room for all those
requirements that are placed upon us. We will also present practical methodologies and
strategies to modify the Reader’s Workshop framework so that it will work for teachers and
their students.

Full Description: Since its publication in 1987, Nancie Atwell’s In the Middle: New
Understandings about Writing, Reading, and Learning has helped countless teachers implement
Reader’s Workshop into their classrooms. This instructional practice has been repeatedly
shown to increases students’ interest in reading and promote better reading comprehension
and analysis. When students can choose books that interest them, they are more motivated to
read and understand what they are reading.

Many of us, however, have limited time, an overwhelming number of standards, and prescribed
curriculums that we must follow. While we know that Reader’s Workshop works, we often are
not able to use it to its full extent.

We are some of those teachers. As a result, we are not able to use Reader’s Workshop every
day in our classrooms. Instead, we implement vital facets of the framework into instruction so
that we can teach the material as well as respond to individual students’ needs.

In Ms. Waldorf’s 6th grade English classes, students are introduced to a new reading strategy
each week, such as learning how to make connections as they read. Students are then given 20
minutes every class period to read their chosen novel and practice that strategy. While they are
reading, she walks around the room and talks to students about any connections they are
making if that is the reading strategy they are working on that week. Students have a chance to
share with the class connections they made by sharing a line from the text they connected to
and why.

In Ms. Perry’s 7th grade English classes, students spend the first ten minutes of class each day
reading their independent reading books that they have self-selected. They also use this time to
explore the classroom library, which offers hundreds of high-interest novels and non-fiction
books. After this independent reading time, students provide a book talk of the current book
that they are reading, and each student takes a turn on a rotating basis. Every Thursday, she
presents a mini lesson related to that week’s activities or strategies presented, and students
have the opportunity to practice this strategy when analyzing their own books. As we progress
throughout the year, she allows the students to have more control over what they practice, and
students are free to self-select which assignment they will complete from a choice-board of
literature analysis activities.

In this session, we will explore these and other ways to incorporate mini lessons on literature
and reading strategies, independent reading time based on students’ self-selected reading
material, and sharing time where students analyze literature and reflect upon their reading
habits. Attendees will leave with practical methodologies and strategies to modify the Reader’s
Workshop framework so that it will work for them and their students.