Key Vocabulary:
Basal: a.k.a Commercial reading programs or basal readers. Guides on what to teach students and when.
Components of a Basal: Selections in grade-level textbooks, instruction about decoding and comprehension strategies and skills, workbook assignments, and independent reading opportunities.
Materials in Basal Reading Programs: Textbook, big books, supplemental books, workbooks, kits, teacher’s guide, home-school connections, assessment system, multimedia resources, and a lesson planner.
Literature Focus Units: A unit that focuses on a single book, genre of books, or author of books in order to teach students how to become better readers.
Steps in Developing a Literature Focus Unit: Select the literature, set goals, develop a unit plan, coordinate grouping patterns with activities, create a time schedule, and assess students.
Literature Circles: Mini “book clubs” within the classroom.
Key Features of a Literature Circle: Choice of books read and group members, interesting and appropriate reading level books, and response to the books.
Types of Talk During Literature Circle Discussions: About the book, about connections, about the reading process, and about group process and social issues.
Roles Students Play in Literature Circles: Discussion director, passage master, word wizard, connector, summarizer, illustrator, and investigator.
Reading and Writing Workshop: Students choose books at their reading levels that interest them. They then read, respond to, and write about those books.
Word Walls: Important words that the teacher has written down and posted on a wall of the classroom.
Think-Alouds: The process of speaking one’s thoughts out loud as they go through a process. In reading, the teacher can think aloud while demonstrating a concept while students can think aloud to help themselves figure out a difficult concept.
Grand Conversations: The teacher provides a large, conceptual prompt regarding a given text which students then discuss as a class.
Shared Reading: The teacher and students reading a passage together as a group.
Series of Activities in Literature Circles: Select books, form literature circles, read the books, participate in a discussion, teach minilessons, share with the class, and assess learning.
Mini-Lessons: A sort of “subplot” of the lesson plan. The teaching of processes, strategies, concepts, etc. that are all included within the main lesson.
Goldilocks Strategy: Students should choose books that are neither too easy or too difficult for them to comprehend.
Responses in Reading Workshop: Students should record their initial reactions, or responses, to the assigned reading and teachers should help students expand on their initial reactions.
SSR: Sustained Silent Reading. Time set aside in the classroom where students read silently to themselves.
Management of the Workshops: Aside from general classroom management, teachers need to maintain a routine. A specific amount of time should be allotted for each step of each workshop.
Classroom Application:
According to a video titled Teaching Strategies for Introducing Literature Circles to a 4th Grade Class, the most difficult part of using literature circles in class is at the very beginning of the school year. At this time, it is critical that the teacher explicitly lays out the expectations and process that students will be going through. This concept applies to any of the workshops mentioned in this chapter. If the expectations are not made clear at the same time that a routine is created, the workshop will not work for the rest of the year and, more importantly, the students will not learn.
Morgan Wyatt 