by Steve Reifman
My classroom’s daily Reading Workshop period consists of several components: mini-lessons that aim to build students’ comprehension skills, independent reading time, partner reading time, and word work that addresses spelling, grammar, and other language conventions and standards. This article focuses on how I structure the work my students do during their partner reading time.
Partner Reading with a Purpose
Whenever the children begin a new unit, they are always reading for a specific purpose and taking notes of some kind as they encounter information in their books that connects to this purpose. Because I want the majority of their time to be spent on reading and talking about their books, however, I make sure that the note-taking is never overly time-consuming. When children read for a specific purpose, their focus sharpens and motivation increases. In addition, reading with a purpose facilitates the development of a whole host of higher-level thinking skills, such as comparing and contrasting.
After the students finish reading their books, we culminate our units by writing literary essays that connect to the specific purpose we established at the outset of the unit. In these essays the kids develop theories and support these statements with evidence and examples from the text. Writing literary essays helps children organize their thoughts, improve their understanding of paragraph structure, carry out a line of reasoning from beginning to end, and write persuasively.
Let me share an example with you. During our “Character Study” unit, each pair reads a book and focuses on different aspects of the main character’s physical appearance, personality, and family life. Paying attention to how authors describe their characters and make them interesting improves student comprehension and prepares them to develop main characters when they write their own fiction pieces. When describing characters, many children tend to mention only hair and eye color, and this unit helps kids develop a more well-rounded understanding of book characters and what makes them tick.
To assist kids in this effort, I provide a sheet called the “Three-Dimensional Bone Structure.” The sheet is divided into three sections (physical appearance, personality, and family life), and as students encounter information in the text pertaining to these “bones,” they record it on the appropriate section of their sheets and include the page numbers on which they located the information. By the time the kids finish reading their books, their bone structures are complete, and everyone is ready to use the information in their literary essays.
Our “Character Study” literary essay focuses on the following question: “If the main character in your book came to life and moved to our community, do you think that person would be a good friend for you?” This topic is an example of “take a stand” writing because the kids need to declare either that “Yes, the character would be a good friend for me” or “No, the character would not be a good friend for me.”
Before the children write their essays, I give them one Reading Workshop period to prepare. During this time, the pairs look through their bone structures to identify three reasons why their characters would or would not be good friends and then find two examples from the book to support each reason. To demonstrate this preparation process, I pretend that I am getting ready to write my essay about Fudge Hatcher from Judy Blume’s Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing. I begin my demonstration by announcing that Fudge would not be a good friend for me. (None of my students seem shocked by this decision.) Next, I list my three reasons: he’s reckless, he bothers people, and he ruins things. Underneath each reason I make two bullet points that include parts from the book that support my reasons. Once the kids complete these preparation sheets, they are ready for the next day’s essay.
The task of writing the essay involves taking the theory, reasons, and examples from their paper from the previous day and organizing this information into a cohesive one-paragraph essay on another sheet of paper. Asking my students to complete these steps provides me with a natural opportunity to reinforce the importance of using transition words and crafting clear topic and concluding sentences.
Because of the many benefits that reading with a purpose and taking a stand offer children, I simply cannot imagine myself teaching without these invaluable practices. If you are looking to incorporate reading with a purpose, writing essays, or both into your teaching practice, I recommend starting with the areas of reading or social studies because the subject matter in these two disciplines lends itself especially well to having children develop theories and locate evidence and examples that justify those theories. Then, select a question or prompt for the end-of-unit essay. The best prompts are those that directly address the unit’s core content. Finally, decide on how you would like your students, as they read, to take notes or collect information that is related to this content and that they will need to use when it comes time to write the essay.
About the Author
Steve Reifman is a National Board Certified elementary school teacher, author, and speaker in Santa Monica, CA. He has written several books for educators and parents, including Changing Kids’ Lives One Quote at a Time andEight Essentials for Empowered Teaching and Learning, K-8. Steve is also the creator of the Chase Manning Mystery Series for kids 8-12. Each book in the series features a single-day, real-time thriller that occurs on an elementary school campus. For weekly Teaching Tips, blog posts, and other valuable resources and strategies on teaching the whole child, visit stevereifman.com. You can also follow Steve on Twitter.