There are three main components to my Reading Workshop: Mini-Lesson / Practice & Conferring / Small Group (strategy groups or Literature Circles).  So far I have talked a lot about conferring and Literature Circles, so I'm going to talk more about Mini-Lessons and how all of this comes together in a unit.  To be honest, I don't think all of these components have really come together for me until the unit I am doing right now, which I'm generically calling "Comparing Themes Across Books." Planning the Unit What should students be able to do? Students have been practicing finding themes in short stories, poems, and literature circle novels throughout the year.  Students have also been encouraged to think about and explore themes in their independent reading; however, most students need more work identifying themes in longer novels.  Additionally, standards RL.5.9 and RL.6.9 expect students to be able to compare themes across novels.  With this in mind, ...

Literature Discussion The best part of Literature Circles is the discussion!  After students have read the selected pages and taken notes, they should be ready to discuss the book with their group.  If I notice that a student is struggling with some part of the preparation, I will confer with him/her before the group meets. Early in the year, I explicitly teach how to have an academic discussion through modeling and guided practice.  As a reminder during Literature Circle discussions, I have sentence stems behind the group meeting table. Accountable Talk Sentence Stems  At the beginning of the discussion, I usually ask one student to give a summary of the selection.  I rotate the student I ask and take a quick grade for summarizing. Student Thinking After that, it's up to my students to keep the discussion going for at least 5 minutes.  If students bring lots of evidence of their thinking, this is usually no problem.  Some groups ca...