Reader's Workshop Weekly Roundup: Week Three

So, onwards to week three. A week in which student leaders were inducted, classes were switched and giant chess pieces arrived (so a regular sort of week then). Also my first full week of the year!

So how did Reader's Workshop go this week?

Well we moved on from thinking about ourselves as readers, and began thinking about our characters. Specifically who is around them, what is their situation, what is their personality like, what do they want and what it standing in the way of that? We talked about strong characters, created a class character map about Parvana from Breadwinner (like a mind map, focusing on family, situation/circumstance, personality and motivation - I'll try to get an image up of it soon) and students created maps of their own characters (lots of Aubreys and Dan Cahills). Friday was a bit of a wash out, since the chess pieces arrived when we were reading and we had to go out and watch the epic game between one of my year 6s and one of next door's year 7s (my guy won, after considerable help was given to both sides).

What was a great success was the beginning of book talks. Students still need to think about summarising (might do a short lesson on that this coming week) and 'selling' the book, but overall they're really getting the kids to think about books they want to read, and each other as readers.

As for the books they are reading? Well, 39 Clues is huge at the moment, so I got a couple more for the room. Also big is the Wendy Mass books, The Wednesday Wars and Totally Joe.  My best reader is digging his way into an adult mystery, and really enjoying it - he says he has to work harder to read it.

I didn't get to start book buddies this week, but will definately next week. We move onto discussing plot next week - looking how things move through a book - but I'm off on a PD session Monday, so it might be tight to fit everything in. I think I can pick up some of it in Writer's Workshop though, since we're looking at narratives there.