We are beginning to launch our Reader's Workshop in our kindergarten class. Reader's Workshop includes Interactive Read Aloud. In the "old days", we might have called this story time. In our Interactive Read Aloud time, we read stories and allow the students time to dig deeper into their thinking about a story. Currently our stories have to do with our community unit…things like getting along, being a good friend, listening, etc. When we read these stories, we stop often and allow students to share their thinking about the text. Many times we do not complete a book at one sitting…sometimes we have to put the book down and come back to it later. Sometimes this is a little hard, but we are learning that our thinking and sharing our thinking takes time!
We often try to figure out what the Author's Message is in our stories. In other words, what is the author trying to teach us? Or what does the author want us to learn from this story. Students share their ideas and we record their thinking as part of our community writing.
Sometimes we write about our reading in our blue Reader's Notebooks. We may draw a picture about something in the story and even begin to write a few letters or words to go with it. At the end of each Reader's Workshop, we share some our work. This is done in a variety of ways. On Thursday, we read the story Try and Stick With It! We wrote in our Reader's Notebooks about something we wanted to get good at. After writing, a few students shared their writing using our document camera which projects it on the smart board. Then the writers get to "teach" their peers about their idea. When done, the student says "I'm ready for questions and comments." At that time, peers are allowed to comment on their work or ask questions about it.
Following this, we worked on a class book that we are writing together.
On Friday we read the story No, David! by David Shannon. You can imagine the laughter and lively discussion that went along with this story. We learned a new way to talk about a story, called Turn and Talk. Students sit facing a partner (we call it knee to knee, eye to eye). They decide who will go first and then share their ideas. For this story, they had to share their favorite part of the story. When finished, students get to share what their partner was thinking. This helps them to really listen to what their partner is saying. It was very fun to see them working so hard on this!
Our assignment was to write in our Reader's Notebooks what we that David learned in the story. For sharing, we gathered perimeter on our rug and everyone had a chance to share their ideas. This is another way we sometimes share during Reader's Workshop.
