Implementing a Workshop Approach to Reading

Abstract Implementing a workshop approach to reading instruction presents many challenges for classroom teachers. These challenges come from external pressures such as high stakes testing, administrative edicts and peer pressures. They are also generated internally from lack of experience with instructional resources, variety of student experiences, and narrow definitions of reading and reading instruction. Introduction In the neo-conservative backlash we currently find ourselves in as educators (Taxel, 1999), instructional approaches that include children's literature in the elementary reading curriculum, commonly referred to as literature based instruction (Raphael & Au, 1997) or reading workshops (Atwell, 1998), are being challenged by current federal legislation and its support for scientifically-based commercial reading programs (e.g. Open Court, Direct Instruction). Teachers implementing workshop approaches, utilizing children's literature as a primary resource for instruction, are coming under fire to provide scientifically-based reading research to support their instructional choices. (Patel Stevens, 2003; Yatvin, Weaver, & Garan, 2003). Proponents of code-based approaches to reading instruction have suggested that literature-based approaches push the teaching of phonics and reading skills to the periphery of the reading program (Footman, Francis, & Fletcher, 1998). In addition, the inclusion of systematic, explicit phonics instruction in a reading workshop or balanced approach has been touted as the answer to the current literacy crisis in America's schools (Meyer, 2002). Considering the political nature of the current debates in reading instruction and what constitutes scientifically-based research (Allington, 2002; Garan, 2002), educators need to be concerned with more than the quality and breadth of the research used to support instructional decisions and programs. Literacy educators and classroom teachers also need to be concerned with the characteristics and abilities of the readers developed and supported in schools, the quality of the conversations among children and teachers, and the effects of standards and standardized assessments on the reading curriculum (Eisner, 2001; Noddings, 1997). With a shift in the political climate aligning to more conservative values and the rapid expansion of high stakes testing (McGill-Franzen, 2000), the role of children's literature may be reduced to an instructional device designed to teach children how to decode more effectively and identify the main idea of a reading selection in order to secure higher scores on standardized tests. Responding to political pressures, elementary teachers are being forced to adopt reading instructional practices and commercial reading programs that focus on decoding and comprehension strategies designed to raise standardized test scores, rather than utilizing children's literature in a workshop approach to reading instruction (Putney, Green, Dixon, & Kelly, 1999). A workshop approach to reading instruction generally includes, but is not limited to, the reading and discussion of authentic children's literature, the teaching of comprehension strategies in the context of reading, opportunities for students to read and explore texts independently, small group literature studies, shared and guided reading instruction, and instruction for decoding text (Serafini, 2001). Several of these components, in particular reading aloud and time for independent reading, were not directly supported by the findings of the National Reading Panel (Report of the national reading panel: Teaching children to read, 1999), to the extent that instruction in decoding and comprehension strategies was supported. Because of this, many teachers have been challenged to provide evidence in order to defend a workshop approach to reading instruction by school administrators, and state and federal authorities. …

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