About the Guide
The Guide to the Reading Workshop: Middle School Grades offers a comprehensive but concise introduction to:
- the need for this series
- research on what adolescent readers need
- ways to launch and sustain independent reading
- a big-picture introduction to the reading workshop
- the architecture of minilessons
- classroom management tips and strategies
- levels of text complexity
- conferring with readers and providing transferrable feedback
- small-group work
- writing about reading
- practical help for book clubs
- instructional Read Aloud
- the special importance of nonfiction reading
- supporting English learners in reading workshop
About the Units of Study for Teaching Reading, Middle Grades Series
We want our middle grades students to become flexible, resilient readers, we want them to have a toolkit of strategies for dealing with difficulty, and we want them to read broadly and deeply, alert to the intricacies of texts and to the power of language. To accomplish such ambitious goals, we need classroom structures and resources that support this kind of explicit teaching and learning. The reading workshop offers a simple and predictable framework for teaching strategies and for giving students feedback while they are in the midst of the ever-changing, complex reading work they will do across the middle school grades.
The Units of Study for Teaching Reading series saves teachers hundreds of hours of planning, freeing time for analyzing student work, working with individuals and small groups, and for studying with colleagues. The series provides teachers with the tools and support they need to move students quickly and efficiently toward grade-level expectations, while also helping kids become proficient, lifelong readers.
