Units of Study for Teaching Reading: A Workshop Curriculum

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This program is comprised of four units:

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Unit 1: Interpretation of Book Clubs Analyzing Themes

Students draw on a repertoire of ways for reading closely, noticing how story elements interact, understanding how different authors develop the same theme, and comparing and contrasting texts that develop a similar theme.

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Unit 2:  Tackling Complexity: Moving Up Levels to Nonfiction

Children investigate the ways nonfiction texts are becoming more complex, and they learn strategies to tackle these new challenges. This unit emphasizes the strong foundational skills, such as fluency, orienting to texts, and word solving, that are required to read complex nonfiction.

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Unit 3:  Argument and Advocacy: Researching Debatable Issues

Students read complex nonfiction texts to conduct research on a debatable topic, consider perspective and craft, evaluate arguments, and formulate their own evidence-based, ethical positions on issues.

 

Unit 4:  Fantasy Book Clubs: The Magic of Themes and Symbols

Students work in clubs to become deeply immersed in the fantasy genre and further develop higher-level thinking skills to study how authors develop characters and themes over time. They think metaphorically as well as analytically, explore the quests and themes within and across their novels, and consider the implications of conflicts, themes, and lessons learned.

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This program is based on the reader's workshop model.  

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"This series builds on decades of teaching and research—in literally tens of thousands of schools. In states across the country, this curriculum has already given young people extraordinary power, not only as readers, but also as thinkers. When young people are explicitly taught the skills and strategies of proficient reading and are invited to live as richly literate people do, carrying books everywhere, bringing reading into every nook and corner of their lives, the results are dramatic." 

Lucy Calkins