Window to Reading/Writing Workshop

Erin's 3rd grade classroom (2/5/09)

In this post, I will be describing with pictures and text how Erin organizes her morning literacy block. I am thrilled to see how well she thought this through and how engaged her students are with literacy. I will be uploading the forms you see here once I receive them electronically. I hope everyone can get a few good ideas from her.

Erin begins her morning with a quick start sheet that has five problems. It is similar to daily oral language where students are revising sentences and working on grammar, usage and mechanics problems. They quickly correct it as a class.

Writer's Workshop

Erin begins Writer's Workshop with a mini-lesson and gathers her students at the back carpet to learn more about writing.
Today she read them a story called A Fine, Fine School students were asked to listen for main ideas, and Erin modeled writing the main ideas on chart paper. After the story, Erin modeled how to write a summary and then sent the students back to write a summary on the story.....

During Writer's Workshop, the students have access to all the materials they need. Here is how Erin has her writing center organized....
The student writing folders are in the middle. All forms such as storyboards, peer edit sheets, graphic organizers for pre-writing, author's circle materials and publishing paper can be found here.
This chart is hanging nearby and students each have a paper clip with their name on it. This is what it would look like when first getting started, but as Writer's Workshop progresses, the student clips will be found at all different stages of the process.
Once student's stories have been published, they can display their most current story on a display rack for others to read during independent reading time.

Guided Reading & Centers

Chelsie has her guided reading groups organized by color. She meets with three or four groups each day. A schedule of who she will meet with is posted at the front of the room along with the word wall words for the week as seen here.....

Each student has a guided reading folder where they track the stories they are reading and keep all materials related to their guided reading assignments....

In a guided reading notebook, students write responses to their reading, ask and answer questions and do assignments related to the reading comprehension strategies....

The higher level reading groups have sheets that they use throughout the reading of a book to keep track of vocabulary learning and to further practice the comprehension strategies. This month they are working on Summarizing, Schema and Visualization. These forms change often....

During the reading block, students are encouraged to find new words in their reading and add them to the "Oh My Word" jar. Each week, some of the words students have found are highlighted. Here is a word that one of the students found while reading the book Matilda....

While Chelsie works with her guided reading groups at the back table, the other students are busily engaged in their center work. At the beginning of each week, the students get a tracking sheet that tells them what they need to do each day in their centers. It looks like this....

On the back is a sheet for Word Work. It tells the students what to work on each day....
Students do some type of word work each day and each day that also do a spelling sort. Chelsie is doing developmental spelling and is using Words Their Way in her classroom. Each student gets a sheet that gives them directions for doing many different kinds of sorts. It looks like this....

Front
Back

Students do spelling sorts each day using leveled words. Notice in the following pictures how several different children are working on words that are on their level....

This student is sorting VVC words and VCe words
This student is sorting words that have ur, ure, ur-e sounds.
Here's yet another students sorting higher level words with different VCV patterns.
One of the higher level students was sorting words with war, wor and wan patterns.
Here is a lower level student sorting more simplistic words with "e" vowel sounds.

Consider that Chelsie's students are doing this work and it is all self-regulated. She is back at the table working with guided reading groups during this.

Center's always begin with 15 minutes of silent reading, then students move in to their other activities. Chelsie does a great job of managing both the students at their desks and the students at the back table. You can tell they are WELL TRAINED and know exactly what to do.
Another center activity is called, "Teacher Choice". This can be any work that the teacher chooses for the student to do. They also do a weekly event writing. This week, they were writing about their trip to the science fair and which project they thought should be chosen as the winner. Notice that the students write...A LOT. In fact, every single student (even the lower students) had the entire sheet filled with writing. This is something she has trained her students to do (to keep writing).

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Here's one last thing that Chelsie does to promote friendship and cooperation during centers. She read her class the story "Stone Soup" and talked about how in order for things to be better, everyone has to cooperate and contribute. Students can fill out a "Stone Soup" sheet when they notice other students in the class contributing and being good. She chooses a few and recognizes students each week.


If anyone has a question for Chelsie, you can ask it in the comment section!