Workshop Wednesday-Building Stamina in a Reading Workshop

Happy Wednesday! I don't know about you, but this has been a long week. I'm excited to link up with Ideas by Jivey for Workshop Wednesday.

 

Today I want to share with you how I start my Reading Workshop. After my kiddos and I set up our Reader's Notebooks. My kiddos and I make a chart of what Reading Workshop should look like and sound like. Having Reading Workshop is totally new to them in 4th grade (although the 3rd grade teacher is trying it this year) so we brainstorm together what I should expect.

Once we make our chart we begin to build stamina. The students start out reading for 15 min. at a time. Each day I add a few min. until we hit 30 min. of reading. My mini-lessons for the first few weeks are about genre types, how do we take care of our books, how do we use our reading logs, how do we choose a just right book, etc.

This week my students and I are working on our first real reading skill. "Reading is Thinking." My students and I generate a list of things that they think about while they read.

After we have made a mini list together I give them this bookmark to show them other things they can think about while they read. You can grab it for free from TPT.

What do you do to launch your Reading Workshop and build stamina?

Don't forget that tomorrow is National Talk Like a Pirate Day. If you do anything with your kiddos to celebrate, I'd love to have you join my first linky party!