At my school we are working on
refining our understanding of workshop structure for both reading and writing
instruction, but also for math and other subjects as well. As is often the case
when an approach gets popular and shows up all over the internet, everyone has
differing – sometimes widely different – understandings of exactly what it
means to teach using a workshop approach.
I think one of the best ways to work
through these sticky parts and clarify our understandings is to dialogue about
them. After all, Paulo Freire argued that humans
learn by problem solving, and one of the best ways to problem-solve is to engage
in dialogue with one another.
In that vein, I recently led
professional learning with grade levels during their collaborative planning
time during which we played “Reading
Workshop Bingo” (see image below) as a way to jump-start conversations
about how well workshop was going in our classrooms. The rules were simple:
find someone who fit one of the descriptions and have them initial that square,
but you could only get the same person to initial a maximum of three times,
forcing people to get up and move around.
The teachers were surprisingly
competitive, and did not want to compromise their possibility of winning by
stopping mid-game to ask their colleagues questions. So we saved that
reflection for after we had a winner (no one seemed to mind that I didn’t
actually have prizes). Our conversation flowed easily as teachers shared how
they’d used their document cameras to make read alouds more accessible, simple strategies
for increasing reading stamina, creative ways they’ve used sticky notes, and
cute stories about kids newly energized about reading.
We all enjoy participating in games,
but even better is celebrating the sometimes simple, sometimes big changes we’ve
made over the past few months. It can be easy to get caught up in all the
pressures to continually change and to lose sight of the actual changes we’ve
already made and the positive effects they have had on our students.
Play some games, engage in dialogue,
and above all, celebrate the positive changes we’ve all made as teachers.
