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Units of Study for Teaching Reading

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Units of Study for Teaching Reading LUCY CALKINS with Colleagues from the Teachers College Reading and Writing Project Units of Study for Teaching Reading A Workshop Curriculum, Grades K–5 Unit Summaries • STATE-OF-THE-ART TOOLS AND METHODS • RESPONSIVE, DATA-BASED INSTRUCTION • EMBEDDED PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT K-5 UNIT Summaries KINDERGARTEN UNIT 1: WE ARE READERS Your biggest message in this, your children’s first-ever of books. As a result, shared reading, read-aloud, and and sounds), and the knowledge necessary to use unit is that yes, indeed, they can read! You’ll know word study will be especially important to this unit. story language to support their approximations of that this unit has succeeded if, by the end of it, your Your kids will be able to sustain one kind of reading reading. Children will meanwhile pore over texts with kindergarten students declare, “We are readers!” for five or ten minutes, another kind of reading for flaps and mirrors and creatures with weird noses While you will be teaching reading strategies and another ten minutes, so that is how reading workshop and trucks with big cranes. They’ll also read “Old habits, the most important teaching will be about will proceed. The predictability of the different kinds Favorite” storybooks, returning to books that you’ll desire and identity. of reading will help your youngsters know that yes, read over and over to them. The constant refrain of indeed, they can do this thing called school. The kindergarten— “Do it again!” — means that kids are The first bend of the unit invites kids to read routine matters, the predictability matters, and the primed to learn from rereading, and in this unit you information texts and the second adds storybooks to crystal clear structure and transitions between parts lean heavily on that. Your children take comfort in the mix, so that by the second half of the unit, reading of the workshop all matter. and also love familiar texts. One aim will be to draw time for your kindergarteners will include time to them toward conventional reading. By the end of this reread and storytell familiar storybooks as well as Of course, most of your kids will be doing emergent unit, many of your students will reach a point where time to study the pictures and figure out words rather than conventional reading, which doesn’t mean they want to read a text conventionally but can’t, (as best they can) in concept books and other that their skills won’t develop in leaps and bounds— when they are craving the skills and powers to read nonfiction books. they will. Children will develop concepts of print conventionally. The next unit, Super Powers, will move (that is, an understanding that books are read from them another big step closer to the reading that they At the start of kindergarten, you won’t be able to cover to cover, left to right, top to bottom), phonemic desperately want to do. teach a minilesson, say “Off you go,” and expect your awareness (learning to rhyme, to hear component kindergarteners to sustain involvement with a stack sounds in a word), phonics (learning letter names 2 K-5 UNIT Summaries KINDERGARTEN UNIT 2: SUPER POWERS: READING WITH PRINT STRATEGIES AND SIGHT WORD POWER At this point in kindergarten, most of your children This is also the age where your children are begging reading just the first few pages of the book. are 4 and 5 years old, still so young! But they’re also anyone and everyone to “Read it again!” They can brimming with energy and desire to read. And they read the same text a hundred times over, and that In the first bend, you’ll announce that children have are familiar enough with the daily rhythms of reading eagerness to reread beloved texts characterizes “super powers” for reading, and you’ll spotlight workshop that things work with a hum rather than in the kinds of work you’ll do and the kinds of material “pointer power,” helping children point as they read, spurts and starts. This means that you are poised to you’ll use. You can make dramatic strides with tapping each word just once, checking that their do some important teaching. To do this, it is important kids by channeling them to practice their reading reading makes sense, and anchoring their pointing by to remember that young children learn through play, superpowers with books you’ve read over and over to noting the words they know “in a snap.” through drama, through exploring. them, songs you’ve sung repeatedly, and charts The second bend rallies kids to move from familiar to you’ve made together. Your kindergartners’ unfamiliar ones and adds to students’ repertoires of This unit glories in children’s love of play. You’ll introduction to paying attention to print will be with super powers (reading strategies), teaching them to dramatize the idea that to read, people call on super familiar and beloved texts, and this will allow them to search for meaning, use picture clues, and to use the powers, just like superheroes do, thus imbuing this bring their energy and enthusiasm to the work of sound of the first letter of a word to help them read. unit with a spirit of fun and accessibility. Instead of one-to-one matching. conveying, “Let me instruct you in how to read,” you’ll In the final bend, you’ll invite students to draw on say, “Oh my gosh, we have to use our super-strength, At this stage in the year, children at benchmark will all of their super powers as they work to make their extra special powers to read this book!” Equally read emergent storybooks, shared reading texts, and voices smoother (fluency), and to communicate their important will be the message that “Superheroes unfamiliar level A and B books. “Unfamiliar” books understanding of the text (meaning). Partners will don’t give up in a jam!” are ones you’ve read only once or twice during shared share favorite parts of books during book talks. reading or books you’ve introduced to kids, perhaps 3 K-5 UNIT Summaries KINDERGARTEN UNIT 3: BIGGER BOOKS, STRONGER READERS At this time of the school year, your kindergarten Since your children will need to carry forward the In the second bend of the unit, you’ll rally students readers are at an important juncture. They are moving reading behaviors that they worked on in the previous around the work of using their knowledge of letters from rereading mostly familiar texts to attempting unit, it makes sense to uphold the metaphor of super and sounds—their sound power—to read tricky words. more difficult books with greater independence. heroes using their reading super powers. You will You’ll teach children first to attend to the initial letter, Whereas in the Super Powers unit, texts such as “The help students to grow their banks of super power then to look to beginning consonant clusters (blends Itsy Bitsy Spider” feature heavily in children’s book reading strategies to help them face the challenges of and digraphs), and finally to move their eyes to attend baggies after repeated reading and singing of the their new books. As the unit progresses, you’ll teach to the end of unknown words. By the end of this bend, song, in this unit they’ll be shopping for unfamiliar readers that as their books get even bigger, their your students will be using more visual information, books, and doing so on their own. Many will have regular super powers need to get bigger, too. You’ll in addition to meaning and structure, to solve made the leap from reading levels A/B books to ask readers to turn their powers up to tricky words. reading books at levels C/D, and some will be beyond. “Extra Strength!” This is a significant time in reading development. The third and final bend of the unit supports students At level C, readers must use the initial consonant In the first bend of the unit, you’ll invite readers to in orchestrating all the strategies they’ve developed or consonant cluster (blend or digraph), along with study the ways books are becoming harder, so they’ll to read more complex books with accuracy, fluency, meaning and syntax to read the correct word. Many be prepared for the new work they need to do as and comprehension. This bend places a particular of your readers will be approaching level D, and these readers. You’ll teach them that they can use their emphasis on reading high-frequency words with books are written so that readers must use meaning knowledge of how patterns go—their pattern power—to automaticity. You will also emphasize the importance and syntax, and check the beginnings and endings of read texts with longer, more complex patterns. You’ll of thinking and talking more deeply about books. words in order to understand what is happening. With equip them with strategies for tackling breaks in all of this learning to do, it’s not only the children who patterns, and you’ll teach them to use their pattern have their work cut out for them! power to think more deeply about what a book is really saying. 4 K-5 UNIT Summaries KINDERGARTEN UNIT 4: BECOMING AVID READERS Kindergarten children at this time of year are and many will come to this unit already able to attend The next bend parallels the work of Bend I, but now blooming, right along with the crocuses and the to the various patterns and pattern shifts that exist in you’ll support children in becoming avid readers of daffodils.
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