Kindergarten– Readers’ Workshop

Unit 6: Building Stamina: Reading Long & Strong

Revised: 10-15-13

Unit Overview / Students will learn reading behaviors and strategies to develop reading stamina.
Unit Goals /
  1. Students will use strategies to efficiently read long and strong.

Unit Notes /
  1. This unit is about helping students learn strategies to read longer and stronger. The main goal is to get them to try to ‘stick with’ a book for longer periods of time. Almost like ‘when I’m done…I’ve just begun…’
  2. Note: We did not use every lesson suggestion or strategy from this unit because we crosschecked the strategies with the behaviors of the text level in the Continuum and found they would be for higher level readers. See the Strong Readers section.
  3. Note that it is very important to find time during your reading work to conference with students around the teaching points they are learning within a unit. You may also use the Unit Checklist as a valuable resource for capturing your conference data.
Here are some questions you could use for conferencing:
  • How do readers read long and strong?
  • What can you do to help yourself read longer?
  • What can you do to help yourself read stronger?
  1. Continue to balance the modeled reading you are doing across the week by utilizing shared reading as well as Close Readings. You could use poems as a way to incorporate familiarity with high-frequency words, rhyming and initial/ending letter/sounds.

Unit Resources / The Complete Year in Reading and Writing K by Karen McNally and Pam Allyn
Goal # / Teaching Points / Associated CCSS and F & P Strategic Actions
1 / Readers read longer and stronger by:
  • Asking: ‘What do good readers look like, sound like and act like?’
Additional Idea from Mapping Team: Use the iPad to video student exhibiting the good reading behaviors you are looking for prior to this lesson to help student name what they aren’t doing. If you want to show a non-example ask a fellow teacher to come in and make a video with you of what not to do as a reader for students to correct. / RF.K.1, RF.K.3, RF.K.4, RL.K.1, RI.K.1, RL.K.10, RI.K.10, SL.K.6
1 / Readers read longer and stronger by:
  • Rereading a book (See Guided Practice bullet 1 & Independent Practice bullet 1)
  • Hunting for more details in pictures (See Guided Practice bullet 4 & Independent Practice bullet 4)
  • Retelling the story using pictures (See Guided Practice bullet 2 & Independent Practice bullet 2)
  • Sharing your favorite part with a partner
Day 1: Model finding and marking your favorite part of a book. Have students do this during independent time or small group reading depending upon your structure.
Day 2: Model thinking aloud about “why” this is your favorite part=explaining why you chose this part. Have students do this during independent time or small group reading depending upon your structure.
Day 3: Model sharing your favorite part with a partner. Have students do this during independent time or small group reading depending upon your structure.
Note: Adapted from Guided Practice bullet 6 and Independent Practice bullets 5 & 6. / RF.K.1, RF.K.3, RF.K.4, RL.K.1, RL.K.7, RI.K.7, RI.K.1, RL.K.10, RI.K.10, SL.K.6
1 / Readers practice reading long and strong by using all of the strategies they have learned.
*Idea: You could model trying on different strategies during the Teach, then during A.E. students could name to their partner what they saw you do to read longer and stronger. For the Share have students try to name the strategies that they used today during reading time. You could use A Box Full of Kittens as your mentor text. Repeat this lesson a second &/or third day. / RF.K.1, RF.K.3, RF.K.4, RL.K.1, RI.K.1, RL.K.10, RI.K.10, SL.K.6