Beginning Reading Workshop in My Classroom

During the past few years, I am embarrassed to say that my students have read very few books.  We have really focused on short stories and story excerpts.  Because of our previous focus, I feel that my love of reading hasn't really been shown to my students. 

One of the goals I have for my students this year is to read more actual books.  My partner teacher and I decided that this year, our students were going to read at least 3 books in class.  This may not seem like much to some English teachers, but for us, this will be a huge shift in our teaching.  To accomplish this goal, we are planning to implement reading workshop at least twice a week.  

So this week was our first week at school.  We knew that to be able to implement this shift we needed to start right away.  (If not, it's too easy to go back to our usual ways of teaching.)  So we decided to start on Friday of the first week.  

Getting Started

We were very nervous.  In the past when we asked students to read silently, they completely rebelled.  So we started by finding a whole class novel that we thought would keep them interested.  We settled on Secrets in the Shadows by Anne Schraff, a Bluford novel.  

We introduced our expectations, which included: following along while I read aloud to them, answering questions in their notebooks and EVERYONE reading silently.  It's the last part that really worried me.

Because it was the first week of school, and I hadn't really taught them any reading skills yet, we worked on making predictions.  We made predictions about the book based on the cover and then then got started reading.

Reading the Book

I started by reading aloud to them, stopping to ask prediction questions from time to time.  Each time I stopped, they groaned.  I heard, "Don't stop reading!  Keep going!"  all day.  I was encouraged!  They were showing some real interest in the novel.  Then came the moment of truth.  

SILENT READING!  

I told my students that they were required to finish reading chapter one silently.  And to my complete surprise, they did it!  Not most of them read, but ALL of them read.  I couldn't have been more thrilled with this.  It was perfectly silent in my room and all students finished the chapter.  There was actual, real reading in my classroom.

Moving Forward

I know that this was only day one of this new adventure for my students and me, but I am very encouraged by day one.  We will continue to try this in my classroom for the weeks to come.  

Wish me luck!

If you are interested in the novel that we are reading, you can find it here.

You can find the audio for free here.