If this is the case, worry not - your students have likely been craving the routine as much as you have, whether they admit this or not, and they’ll fall back into routine pretty seamlessly. To help facilitate a smooth return to workshops, choose units that will keep student engagement high and opportunities for success plentiful. The Reading and Writing Project Team often recommends units with a slight research angle, in which reading and writing are aligned for maximum transfer. Engagement can often be surprisingly high in units that have a nonfiction or research angle, as students have so much fodder for their writing. In third grade, you might organize your readers into research clubs, perhaps all choosing a different animal to study. In fifth grade, you might channel your students toward content area reading and writing, and eighth graders might engage in some investigative journalism.
Here are a few more tips to get your workshops up and running after testing is over:
At this week’s TCRWP Twitter chat, Katy Wischow and Audra Robb will lead a discussion on recharging your workshops after testing. If you or your students are experiencing post-testing slump, don’t miss our experts chatting about how to combat that in fresh, exciting ways.
Each Wednesday night at 7:30pm eastern, The Teacher's College Reading and Writing Project hosts a Twitter chat using the hashtag #TCRWP. Join @kw625 & @audrakrobb to chat about recharging your workshops after testing tomorrow evening.
Not on Twitter? Take Heinemann’s free Twitter for Educators course here.
Anna Cockerille, Heinemann Editor and Coauthor of Bringing History to Life (Grade 4) in the Units of Study for Teaching Writing Series, was a teacher and a literacy coach in New York City and in Sydney, Australia, and later became a Staff Developer and Writer at TCRWP. She also served as an adjunct instructor in the Literacy Specialist Program at Teachers College. Anna has been a researcher for Lucy Calkins, contributing especially to Pathways to the Common Core: Accelerating Achievement (Heinemann 2012), and the Units of Study for Teaching Reading, Grades 3–5 series (Heinemann 2010). Anna is currently serving as an editor on the forthcoming Phonics Units of Study series for grades K-2, and previously served as an editor for the Units of Study for Teaching Reading, K–5 series.
Follow her on Twitter @annagcockerille