Stepping Into New Discoveries in Reading/Writing Workshop

Reading/Writing Workshop: Non-Fiction Unit

(November/December)

   After two months of escaping into some amazing stories during our fiction unit in Reading and Writing Workshop, we are moving into a new unit focusing on non-fiction text.  
   The unit will begin with mini-lessons and conferences focusing on reading strategies that will help us navigate this new type of text.  We will learn about the variety of text features that help us identify the big ideas and topics that the author is sharing with us. We will also learn how to "chunk" text into smaller pieces so that we can "recollect" the information we have learned and discuss our discoveries with classmates. 
  (During our first non-fiction day of Reading Workshop, I was impressed to see how eager the students were to ask questions and use their prior knowledge about topics to take what they already know and grow.) 
   We will continue to work on building our understanding of how to complete "boxes and bullets" to further understand the concept of main idea and supporting details. This will be an ongoing learning experience as we move into more complex texts as the unit gets underway.
  We are using our Reading Journals to record our discoveries, ask questions (and try to answer them), record things we are wondering about, predict, and continue to make connections to understand topics on a deeper level. 
  As with our fiction unit, the Reading and Writing Workshop will mirror each other during our literacy block. We will be reading (independently and in pairs) a variety of non-fiction texts and writing about what we are discovering. We will also begin researching topics of personal interest in books and on appropriate websites using our iPads. As we move through our research, we will begin drafting a research paper on our chosen topics. By the end of the unit, we will each create a research project that reflects everything we have learned about the topic using the reading strategies we have learned for navigating non-fiction text.