Lake George Elementary School uses a research-based reading curriculum developed by Teachers College Reading and Writing Project (TCRWP) throughout our K-6 classrooms. TCRWP is a research and staff development organization housed at Teachers College at Columbia University. It's reading instruction relies on research that shows that kids need to read a lot of texts, with high comprehension, in order to move up levels of text complexity.
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Reading Instruction:
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Reading Workshop
Reading Workshop is one component of our comprehensive balanced literacy program. The goal of this teaching method is to explicitly teach students strategies to become more skillful at comprehending text, and involves students in authentic reading experiences that focus on the strengths and needs of each individual student through differentiated instruction. This method emphasizes the importance of student engagement and the interaction between readers and the text.
The workshop runs approximately one hour in length and routinely begins with a mini-lesson, followed by student independent reading time, a mid-workshop teaching point, partner/club time, and culminates with a teaching share.
The workshop runs approximately one hour in length and routinely begins with a mini-lesson, followed by student independent reading time, a mid-workshop teaching point, partner/club time, and culminates with a teaching share.
Small Group Instruction
Small Group Instruction is scheduled into the reading workshop in many classrooms. There are different formats that serve different purposes:
Guided Reading: A guided reading group is comprised of students who are reading books at a similar level of difficulty. Students practice applying the reading strategies they know with new texts, and as they encounter new challenges they are supported in their new learning. The ultimate goal is to help students transfer this new learning to independent reading of more complex texts--reading a variety of texts with ease and deep understanding.
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Strategy Lesson: A strategy lesson is comprised of students who need similar coaching or support. These students may or may not be reading at the same level of text difficulty, but do benefit from similar instruction. For instance, several students may need support with fluency. The lesson typically begins with the teacher sharing a teaching point and offering a brief demonstration followed by an extended practice time for students to try the strategy. The teacher coaches as the students read and try the strategy. Strategy lessons tend last ten minutes or less, and most of the lesson is devoted to students working while the teacher acts as coach.
Special Interventions: Some students may need extra support with a particular aspect of reading, even though the particular strategy has been taught over and over during mini-lessons, reading conferences, and small group instruction. In these cases, teachers think creatively in order to develop an individualized plan. For instance, a student who continues to struggle with fluency even after ample classroom practice, may benefit from recording and listening to their own reading for a few days.
Book Clubs: Usually four to five readers fairly matched by reading level comprise a book club. They are formed for students to talk across a whole line of books either by topic, theme, series or author. This structure allows a teacher to focus on reading skills as students read, think and talk about shared texts. They usually meet for 5-10 minutes each day, replacing the time that is dedicated to partnerships. It is a time to help push readers to read more, and there is an expectation that members will prepare for conversations by doing some thinking, marking pages or discuss or jot notes during the independent reading time before the club meets.
Special Interventions: Some students may need extra support with a particular aspect of reading, even though the particular strategy has been taught over and over during mini-lessons, reading conferences, and small group instruction. In these cases, teachers think creatively in order to develop an individualized plan. For instance, a student who continues to struggle with fluency even after ample classroom practice, may benefit from recording and listening to their own reading for a few days.
Book Clubs: Usually four to five readers fairly matched by reading level comprise a book club. They are formed for students to talk across a whole line of books either by topic, theme, series or author. This structure allows a teacher to focus on reading skills as students read, think and talk about shared texts. They usually meet for 5-10 minutes each day, replacing the time that is dedicated to partnerships. It is a time to help push readers to read more, and there is an expectation that members will prepare for conversations by doing some thinking, marking pages or discuss or jot notes during the independent reading time before the club meets.
Interactive Read Aloud
Interactive Read Aloud (with accountable talk) is a powerful balanced literacy teaching component. Teachers read aloud several times a day, and at least three times a week create opportunities for accountable talk around the read aloud. This component is generally outside the reading workshop, but the read aloud often supports the reading workshop. It is a time when a teacher reads aloud to students in order to model and demonstrate the behaviors of proficient, fluent and engaged reading. It also provides students with exposure to new and challenging vocabulary, concepts and text structures. It is also a time when students receive instruction that helps them talk well about books. Students discuss their thoughts and ideas about the text, either as a whole group or in partnerships.
Shared Reading
Shared Reading is an opportunity for the teacher to read and reread a text with students over the course of several days (all eyes on a shared text) in order to demonstrate for students how reading works. It is a critical part of a balanced literacy program. The shared text is always a text that everyone in the class or a group can see, so it may be a big book with large print, a poem on a chart, or a text projected by means of a document camera. In kindergarten it helps readers develop the earliest reading behaviors and in the intermediate grades it can help mature readers. Concepts of print, word solving strategies, ways to orchestrate the sources of information, and fluency are key skills taught through shared reading. The teacher often begins each ten-minute session by warming readers up with a text they already know well. Then the teacher turns the students’ attention to the text they are work in, which may be a new text or one they saw the day before.
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Close Reading
Close Reading is another form of shared reading where the teacher and students re-read a text multiple times to extract multiple levels of meaning. Close reading opportunities help students understand the different lenses you can use to study a text and that these same lenses can be used to study and understand texts across genres: poetry, literature, informational texts, etc. During close reading, students focus on the central ideas and key supporting details, reflect on the meanings of individual words and sentences, and develop ideas over the course of the text. Teachers may prompt students to ask themselves questions about the context, the craft and structure, and the integration of knowledge and ideas in the text. Subsequent readings help students to examine deeper questions. Close reading questions may include:
- What is the author telling me here?
- Are there any hard or important words?
- What does the author want me to understand?
- How does the author play with language to add to meaning?
Word Study in the Reading Program
Word study is basic to the complex act of reading, and a daily component of balanced literacy at each grade and for every level of reader. In the early grades, for example, shared reading sessions, provide opportunities to teach concepts of print, letter-sound relationships, and high-frequency words as children are learning to read. In guided reading lessons across the grades, teachers design small group activities based on the students’ instructional reading level needs to support word meaning and vocabulary learning, as well as teach spelling patterns, word structure, and word-solving actions. It is critical for word study to transfer into students’ independent reading and writing, and to do this in reading, teachers evaluate how students are applying their word study knowledge and coach them to draw on what they’ve learned as they read more and more complex texts.