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Workshop Wednesday – Getting Reading Workshop Started!

Hi friends! Today is my FIRST day back to school (with students)! :o) Today is also the LAST DAY of my 8 Days of Giveaways! Have you entered?? Only one more chance to win! Head over to my facebook page to see the great prize available to you today! (After you read this post of course!)

Soooo, today’s post isn’t going to be totally exciting since the pictures I have are still pre-kiddos because I am publishing before the school day actually starts…… but I hope you will still get some great ideas that you can use in your classroom!

Remember, since everyone’s start dates are so different, the topic for August AND September will be Getting Workshop Started in the Classroom. Please write about only one workshop in your post so that you can link it up accordingly below, and then please come back each week to share! (In other words, if you use Reading, Writing, and Math Workshop and you want to share about all three, please link up in three different weeks.) Today, I’ll be sharing about Reading Workshop, but feel free to link up with Writing or Math if you’d like! 🙂

Getting started with Reading Workshop in my room on the very first day looks a little something like this:

My classroom library is super organized (even more so, now that I have Fourth Grade Flipper’s adorable labels!!) so one of the very first things we do is talk about how the books are organized, and rules for my classroom library. (Only one book per student at one time, the “class librarian” reshelves books in the return bin at the end of the day, books should be listed in their reading log, my books don’t leave the classroom, and books are stored in their browsing boxes ONLY – not in desks or bookbags.) Can you tell I’m anal about my books?? But as far as I know, I haven’t lost any! (But then, really, would I know?? Ha!) One day, I’ll invest in matching book baskets- I just keep accumulating baskets as I accumulate more books, and I can’t get rid of my old ones!

Anyway, onto the students’ browsing boxes- all the students have one. This is where they keep their reading notebooks, AR folder, sticky notes, and books they are reading. But they all look the same:

So another first day “thing” we do is decorate a tag for the side that faces out. I cut poster board to fit the front of the boxes (4″x3″) and the students will write their name and decorate the tags. Then, I laminate them and hot glue them to the front.

Last, before I let them actually go get a book to read, we talk about ways we choose books- what makes them good books for us or interesting to us- and we create an anchor chart! Oh and PS, when you look at this next picture, please know….. my name is Jivey, and I am a magnet hoarder. 😛

So, that’s my first day in Reading Workshop! It’s about the only thing I get through besides rules, lunch, and getting home on the right bus, but it’s an absolute MUST to get the kiddos in the right frame of mind for reading in the classroom!

I hope you’ve gotten some ideas to use in your own classroom…and I hope you’ll share your own! Link up below to Reading Workshop, Writing Workshop, or Math Workshop and tell us how you get started! Make sure to go under the correct label to link up! That way, we can look through the links by subject later. 🙂