Teachers engage students at each level of their understandin
g by providing them first with explicit instruction, then guided practice, and finally practice using skills independently.

Mini-lessons
A 10-15 minute mini-lesson each day provides direct, explicit instruction for a specific teaching point. The mini-lessons teach concepts, strategies, and techniques for reading and comprehension while encouraging students to read and interact with literature. Sample mini-lessons can include:
comprehension strategies
procedures for Reading Workshop
reading strategies and skills
literary elements
literary techniques (i.e. voice, descriptive words, etc.)
Independent Reading Time and Conferring
This is the time when students practice strategies modeled in the mini-lesson or practice reading. Students can read alone, in pairs, or in small groups. Teachers have the opportunity to confer with students or teach guided reading lessons or have a small-group strategy lesson on a specific strategy or skill. Teachers can also do various assessments such as running records, retellings, or keeping anecdotal notes on children's progress. Some activities include:
Responding to text in reader's response notebook.
Story chat with a group of students.
Work with a reading partner.
Do some silent reading
Guided Reading Groups - 3 day sequence to move students from one level to another with specific instruction about text characteristics of the next level. All students are reading the same text that is unfamiliar and is one level above the students’ independent reading level.
Strategy Lessons - The teacher may choose a familiar text but students may also have different text at or even below their independent reading level. Groups target children who struggle with the same skill. Teachers begin with naming the strategy, demonstrate the strategy, and invite the students to try it out using their text. Strategy lessons build upon one another just as mini-lessons do. Groups are short term and flexible.
Conferring with Readers
During independent reading time, teachers are often conferring with individual students about their reading. Conferences provide the teacher with an opportunity to meet individually with a student to assess progress, to provide guidance as needed, and to assist in goal-setting. Through guiding questions, such as those listed below, the teacher helps the student verbalize reading strategies being used and presents the “next step” in the child’s individual learning. Conferring conferences last 4-5 minutes.
Have you made any connections to your reading?
What are you working on as a reader today?
How can I help you with that?
Have any questions come up while you are reading?
What are you going to work on next?
The goal is to guide students in developing strategies that will transfer to many different texts. Teachers keep notes about what was discussed in the conference as a part of ongoing assessments.
Mid-Workshop Interruption
Helps students increase their stamina by providing a short break where they extend the mini-lesson, make connections and briefly share their independent work.
Sharing Time
The class regroups to discuss what they learned or did in their groups, such as which strategies they used for reading, or projects they worked on. Share time is VERY IMPORTANT. Some of the benefits include:
Reinforcement of the mini-lesson and how students applied it during their reading
A way to assess what students have and have not learned.
Students learn to listen, think, and talk about their learning
Keeps kids on task, knowing that they will have to discuss their work during share time.