TDavenport

These chapters gave me more insight on how to incorporate reading workshops in my classroom.  As I stated before about the previous chapters, I do have reading workshops in my first grade classroom.  Although some of my ideas and lessons are similar to those in this book, I have learned about new and different approaches.  The mini-lessons involve more detailed work than some of what I do now.  I teach a 'mini-lesson", but have found that it is not always during my workshop time with the whole group.  I like the way that these next three chapters really break down the process of managing the workshop time.  Organization was an important topic in chapter 4, because it stated that mini lessons should be taught everyday from day one.  This would give the students lots of modeling and practice with journal responses.  I enjoyed reading through the sample lessons in chapter 5 (pgs77-83).  although I still feel that some of what is offered in this book is too hard for first grade, most of it can be adapted to the first grade level.  I would like to try some of the sample lessons to see how they go.  Hopefully I will be able to implement this program fully next year.  It seems to be very beneficial to the students and to the teacher as well.