This Week in Reader's Workshop

This year in 1st Grade, we are going to a great journey of reading. These little "reading adventurers" have learned that like any other journey and trip, we must get ready and pack our backpack full of things we need. For the past two weeks, these smart readers have been building stamina in reading and make their reading muscles grow strong and big. On the first day of Reader's Workshop, we set the timer to read for 10 minutes, then each day forward, we keep adding more and more minutes to build up our stamina. As of today, our readers are able to sustain 20 minutes of reading time on their own.
So now that the readers have their reading stamina in their "reader's backpack", we are going to keep adding things and strategies we know and need so we can travel far.
Today, your child was introduced to two types of texts: "just-right books” and "look books". Basically "just-right" books are texts that match the child's reading level. With these "just-right" books, readers are able to apply various strategies to help them decode (solving tricky words), comprehend (reading for meaning and understanding), envision (making a movie in their minds), predict and infer ("What might happen next? What is the author really talking about?") and many more. Readers achieve their best when they are able to apply reading strategies to books that aren't too difficult or too easy for them. Therefore encourage your child to reread and apply a different strategy each time. This will help build their independence and confidence in reading.
On the other hand, "look books" are books that readers pick based on the topic of interest. It could be a genre-based text (space, animals, insects, transportation) or author/series-based (Dr. Suess, Mo Willems, Arthur, Clifford etc.). These books aren't necessary "just-right" for them, in fact, when given a choice to pick a look book, kids often pick texts that are nonfiction, or harder texts or a series that they really love and were read to them by a teacher or parent but they aren't able to read yet. Readers "look" at these texts and try to use pictures to help decode. They also look at pictures and read short captions to learn about the topic. Some children also choose these books as a "goal-setter" to help them get their minds ready and get a feel of what reading harder texts is like.

Right now in your child's book box at school, they have a combination of "just-right" books and "look books". They will be changing their books weekly. If you see your child bringing home the same book more than once, it is probably they are rereading to try out new reading strategies or to practice fluency and prosody. Ask them what strategy they are trying out tonight! = ) Happy reading!