The workshop format allows teachers to structure learning for a diverse group. During reading workshop, students read books at individual levels. Teachers can assess individuals and pull small groups of students to work on specific skills, including phonics concepts and comprehension strategies. Writing workshop consists of a 10-minute mini-lesson where the teacher addresses a particular writing skill and individual writing time. Students are given the choice of topic and format. Teachers use writing time to conference with individuals or small groups. During any type of workshop, it is important that all students are either reading or writing at their level for the maximum time allotted.
Students of all ages benefit from listening to an adult read aloud. It allows them to hear fluent, expressive reading on a regular basis. Teachers can read from text that is above the reading level of the students to concentrate on comprehension strategies, like summarizing, making connections, questioning and analyzing. Read-alouds teach young children to listen attentively and to appreciate a good story. There is a wide variety of children's literature available, making it easy for teachers to expose students to different genres, including fiction, fantasy, nonfiction, historical fiction and poetry.
There are six comprehension strategies to teach during reading instruction. Exposure to the strategies can begin as early as kindergarten and extend throughout elementary school. Teachers should deliberately teach strategies during read-alouds by modeling and then giving students time to practice. Strategies include making connections, questioning, analyzing, visualizing, inferring and evaluating. An example of a teacher modeling how to make connections might sound like this: The teacher reads from a book, "The night Max wore his wolf suit and made mischief of one kind and another ..." She stops reading and says, "That sentence reminds me of when my son used to dress up in a Peter Pan costume and jump around the house. That's called a text-to-self connection. If you have any connections while I'm reading, raise your thumb and you can tell about it when I stop."
Graphic organizers are visual representations of ideas, including word and concept maps, story maps and Venn diagrams. They allow students to break down ideas into manageable pieces. Children can use organizers to retell stories, study character elements, analyze vocabulary words or draft original text. Even young elementary students can use simple graphic organizers by drawing their ideas instead of writing them. An example of using graphic organizers in the classroom is to choose a list of vocabulary words from a story the children are reading. Assign each student a word and hand out blank organizers with a box in the middle and four boxes surrounding it. The middle box is for the vocabulary word. One surrounding box is for the definition, one for a synonym, one for an antonym and one for a picture.