Resources

Readers Workshop

For readers workshop, I think there’s a lot of good supplemental resources, professional books that you can go, and dive into, without formal training. There are definitely books that will help guide you– in readers workshop I had no formal training, strictly conversations with teachers, book clubs, professional book clubs, and books, like  The Art of Teaching Reading, that we read, reflected on, and we built as a team together. Reading with Meaning has also been a big influence for me, with a focus on comprehension skills.

Guided Reading

Guided reading was actually introduced to me in my credential program, by Dr. Marilyn Chi.  We read Guided Reading and Word Matters.  But I didn’t really learn it and apply it until I was in my first year of teaching, and we have a literacy coach on our site, and the literacy coach literally came in to all of our  rooms and modeled for us lessons on “How to do a guided reading lesson.”

Writers Workshop

My writers workshop training came strictly from the Noyce Foundation. The training is pretty intense, and really moved my teaching in addition to reading the books.

Considering High Stakes Testing

My colleagues and I decided to create a lunch book club, strictly volunteer.   We looked at Lucy Calkin’s Art of Teaching Reading (see link above), and a chapter in Guiding Reading and Writers, grades 3-6.  Chapter 17 in there is all on testing and test prep.