3 Reasons why I switched to first Grade Reading Response and Said Goodbye to Writers’ Workshop
When I first started teaching 1st grade, I don’t even think I knew what first grade reading response was. Way back in the early 2000’s Lucy Calkins was the queen of writing and becoming the queen of reading too. Our district jumped into Lucy Calkins’ Writers Workshop head first–so much so that my school purchased a copy of her VERY EXPENSIVE writing curriculum units for all of us!
I read. I studied. I worked with our team on creating a writers’ workshop routine that felt cozy and gave me all the warm fuzzies and gave my kids a chance to figure out how to become great writers by just writing and writing and writing…
But warm fuzzies don’t equal evidence-based research. And I soon realized that kids needed at least a *little* help learning to write… it wasn’t just going to come to them with more practice.
So I started conferencing strategically with kids to give direct instruction right at their level. I would meet with a small group during writing time to give extra support to some of my friends because I saw that just giving them 30 minutes to free write was not the best bang for my buck.
Then, I added in mini-lessons to target certain skills we needed to work on. And before I knew it, my writers’ workshop looked nothing like Lucy’s because hers was too loosey-goosey and vague for what I knew my kids needed.
And along came this little thing called the Science of Reading…
First it changed my reading instruction.
And then, after 10 years of teaching first grade, it began to reshape my writing instruction.
Now, my literacy block isn’t really broken up into separate reading and writing segments. But it connects and blends all into one integrated literacy block using systematic phonics, read alouds, oral language comprehension, and reading response in first grade!
Here’s a look at 3 reasons why I said goodbye to writers’ workshop and hello to first grade reading response!
Explicit Writing Instruction
Reading response uses systematic, explicit writing instruction. There’s no more, “Think about what you want to write about…now go write!”
In first grade reading response, we are telling the kids the plan for writing. “Today we are going to write sentences using some of the vocabulary words we learned from the story.”
Some days, that looks like guided writing where we are all writing together and focusing on our mechanics and syntax.
Other days that looks like independent writing (once they have the routine down) where they are coming up with their own sentences to write.
And vocabulary is just one focus example. In my read aloud literacy block plans, we spend one day working on vocabulary, another day of the week, working on story elements, another day for retelling, a day for connecting our story to science or social studies and doing some non-fiction writing, and a day for responding to a writing prompt about the story.
First Grade Reading Response Connects Reading To Writing
No more chunk of reading time and chunk of unrelated writing time. Now they flow seamlessly together. To the point that kids don’t even realize they’ve made the switch from reading to writing.
I love that I don’t have to ask kids to clean up from reading time and get ready for writing time. It’s just one longer lesson that all fits together. Think of our first grade reading response time as they BRIDGE between reading and writing.
We start by teaching our focus literacy skill for the day (retelling, vocabulary, etc). Then, we read aloud the story. We spend time practicing our literacy skill as a whole group in the context of reading…. think oral language comprehension, like discussing the elements of the story together or with partners.
Then, we move into writing using the focus skill with first grade reading response. (And for those who are curious, we move into our small groups right after writing! Take a peek at my literacy block schedule here.)
Reading Response Builds Background Knowledge
Raise your hand if you ever had kids in writers’ workshop who either…
- Had no idea what to write about OR
- Wrote the same story every single day
Anyone? Both of my hands are up and my feet too! 🙂
It didn’t matter how many brainstorming sessions we did on what to write about…it’s hard for kids to write about things they don’t know about or haven’t experienced.
Instead, frontloading kids with information from a read aloud and discussing the details of the book as a class, and making connections from the story to our own lives gives kids the content they need to have something to write about!
Instead of spending the first 10 minutes–or the whole time!–struggling to get started on what to write, kids are ready to write, and they have a plan for writing.
Yeah, but doesn’t this take the creativity out of writing? Absolutely NOT.
It’s still their words, their sentences, their ideas. It’s just targeted. It’s just giving them a focus so they can use their brain power for writing instead of coming up with content!
Look at this cute reading response paper from my own kindergartener!
So, What Does A Literacy Block Look Like With Reading Response?
Now, during our literacy block time, we start with our explicit phonics instruction. Then, we move into our weekly read aloud, and then we respond to our reading as our writing time–reading response! Sometimes our writing time is spent writing about the elements of the story we read. Sometimes, it’s writing about vocabulary words we learned in our read aloud. Other times, it’s responding to a writing prompt related to the story we just read.
You can find weekly and daily lesson plans for using a single read aloud for your entire week of literacy block plans here! This read aloud bundle includes first grade literacy block lesson plans for the entire year…week by week!
