Our Plan for Teaching Reading

After much thought, reading, and discussion, Reena and I have come up with the following plan for incorporating the teaching of reading into Humanities:
Each day, except Wednesday, we will set aside 30 minutes for "Reading Workshop", which will include 5 minutes for either a systems minilesson or a booktalk, 20 minutes for independent reading with conferencing, and 5 minutes for partner talk and class debriefing.

• Systems Minilessons are very short reading minilessons that address the systems of reading in the class, such as how the library works, how to read and conference quietly, how to choose a book, strategies for talking with a partner, how to keep track of books read, how to write "book letters" to friends and the teacher, and how to give booktalks.
• Booktalks will be performed by the teacher and/or the students. All students will need to give one or two booktalks per quarter. Initially we will have to scaffold the teaching of how to give a booktalk. The purpose of the booktalk is to grow enthusiasm for books in the class and "sell" books to the right kids.
• "Book letters" will be written responses to reading on a book of their choice. Thus, we are not saying they will need to respond in writing on a daily or even bookly basis. Writing these letters effectively will also require good scaffolding and modeling.
• The teaching of comprehension, fix-up strategies, literary conventions, etc... will take place both during conferencing (one-on-one), through responses to book letters, and in the "humanities block" (i.e. the other 90 minutes of the class)

During the "humanities block" we will teach comprehension strategies through the short story read alouds or nonfiction read alouds we are using in the class. For example, we are beginning our immigration unit with a short vignette called "Orientation Day" about a Chinese-American girl who is questioning her identity. We will think-aloud about the author's purpose, main idea, and analyze her character, in addition to having students journal responses to it to scaffold their understanding about "what it means to be American". When we are reading nonfiction we will pay attention, thinking aloud / marking up / chart, the textual structures. There is a great book that is a great synthesis between teaching historical thinking as well as good reading strategies for learning history / social issues called "Making Sense of History" by Myra Zarnowski.
We are going to focus on the following reading strategies the most in the beginning because they are most important for test taking: main idea / determining importance; author's purpose; word study; text structure; and inferencing (which we will do through character analysis: theories with evidence). In conferencing we will focus mostly on the struggling readers who need the most explicit teaching in terms of visualizing, fix-up strategies, and prior knowledge activation.
There's more.
Mondays we would like to set aside for extended reading and writing workshop. So, on Monday, we would still have our 30 minute structure for reading as described earlier, but we may extend the class discussion about our reading, and add time for students to actually work on and get help with their book letters and booktalks. The same would go for writing. Students would get extended time to "play" in their writer's notebooks and share their writings with the class. Mondays would be a time for us to take stock, as a class, of how we're growing as readers and writers. It would set the stage for the week in terms of minilessons and independent reading and writing foci.
Spelling and grammar would reserve a 15-minute place every day of the week except Mondays. The 30 minutes on Wednesday, normally reserved for Independent Reading will be taken over by Independent Writing.
We have also developed some more planning templates, including conferencing guides, conferencing assessment sheets, yearly and daily reading logs, and unit and daily planning sheets that you may find useful, which we will post in the next few days.