August 29, 2013

What do readers read?

This year I decided to make a "What do readers read?" anchor chart to start off Readers Workshop.  I've seen a few similar versions on Pinterest and other teacher sites, and I loved the message: reading is all around us and we are all readers.


We started with just the typical "words," "books," and "sentences," but then the kiddos started to get in to it. One little girl had just been to the dentist and had a "Great Check-up!" sticker, so we added "stickers."  We'd just talked about our how we "read" calendars and graphs in Math, so we had to add those. Then one kiddo shared that his mom had read the flyer that went home about Picture Day, so that led to adding "catalogs" and "posters."  One creative kid even came up "time"... but I left that one off :)

After we made the chart, I sent the kiddos off to explore reading bins at their tables. I made sure to include a variety of fiction, nonfiction, short, long, hard and soft cover books in each bin to reinforce the idea that readers have many options.  For the next couple of weeks, I will rotate these bins around the tables and add in some simple poetry anthologies, wordless books, and more decodable texts.  We will continue to use table bins until we make the transition into individual, leveled book bins in a week or two (once I finish their reading assessments!)

I think this anchor chart will become one of the staples in our room.  I know we will have many opportunities to return to it as we move through nonfiction, how-to, poetry, and persuasive units in reading and writing.  

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