Juli Kendall's Weekly
Reading Workshop Journal

A MiddleWeb Listserv Project

Self-selected members of the MiddleWeb Discussion List are joining together to explore the Reading Workshop and other ideas about supporting young adolescent readers. Juli Kendall, a reading teacher/coach in Long Beach, California, is helping moderate the discussion. Juli is also keeping a weekly journal of her own Reading Workshop initiative. Find out more about our project at our Reading Workshop homepage. You'll find Juli's background article here. Links to many of the tools created by Juli and her colleagues are embedded in these journals. Most often, when you click on them, a PDF file will begin to download. You'll find a list of the downloads here.

Week #1
Journeys Begin with a Map


Let's start at the very beginning,
A very good place to start.
When you read,
you begin with A, B, C...

From The Sound of Music

This summer as I got ready to implement Reading Workshop in a new setting, I found myself needing to become concrete, and so I started to map. Using Heidi Hayes Jacobs' book, Mapping the Big Picture: Integrating Curriculum and Assessment K-12, I came up with a draft for the first month. Always before I have mapped a year at a time. This time I wanted an "in the works" map. One that could be constantly revised and modified from month to month. I want to ensure that it reflects student needs based on the ongoing assessments and progress we are making through the units and mini-lessons.

One of my collaborating teachers took a look at the map, and we had an animated conversation about how assessment for each student has to drive our instruction. We talked about what those assessments should look and sound like. She made the suggestion that we be sure to indicate that the mini-lessons would be driven by the assessments. So we added a comment to the mini-lessons column -- "based on assessments."

[Download Juli's September 2001 curriculum map here - PDF file]

Then we gave our principal and several other teachers a copy of the revised draft map. They didn't have suggestions but did have interesting reactions. The principal asked us to be part of the professional development on Reading Workshop for our teaching staff. In addition to the official staff development, a group of teachers have decided to meet on Friday mornings (the only time available due to busy schedules) for "coffee" and an ongoing Reading Workshop conversation.

So what did we learn from our initial professional development session on Reading Workshop? We learned the infamous "less is more" lesson. As always, we had to make decisions and use the amount of time we had to focus on 2-3 important teaching points. We started with a KWL and discovered what prior knowledge staff had about Reading Workshop. Here are some comments in response to our question "What do you know about Reading Workshop?"
--individual growth

--personal interest in reading

--reflection on reading passages

--reading and responding in reader's logs

--read independently and discuss what you read

--a program that helps a class use different literary genres

--small, heterogeneous groups

--I don't know (one honest soul made this comment)

--read every single day with the fragile readers

--mini-lessons based on needs (lots of assessment)

--literature circles, discussion of books

--reading comprehension

--Read Aloud

--Guided Reading

--uses good literature

--try to involve all levels of reading

Our teaching points were 1) the importance of assessment and 2) getting started in September. We shared our curriculum map for September and the way we score Independent Reading time. At the end of this first session, we asked them to write down any questions they had or additional help or information they wanted.

We plan to use these for designing our next presentation and providing year-long ongoing assistance. We want it to be based on teacher needs. Here's what they said:
--I want to learn how to level books

--Learn more about Reading Workshop units

--More strategies on how to manage the in-flowing and out-flowing of books

--Does this Reading Workshop take 2 hours?

--How to level books!!!!!

--Observe other teachers doing Reading Workshop

--Leveling books

--Lesson on mini-lesson

--Ideas for academic centers

--Model for us with students

--Mini-lessons

--How to level books

--Want to know how to level books

--Demonstrate the mini-lessons

--Application to existing programs with time schedule

Obviously, we now have some clear indications about next steps. Maybe we should consider giving teachers a choice between several topics.

What's next? The first week of school!

Read Juli's next journal entry

Read Juli's backgrounder about her work

Back to Juli's journal index

Back to the Reader Workshop Index Page