Renata Brown: #2 The Pleasure Principle

"What we practice daily is what we build a life on..." (author unknown) and this quote hold true to reading.  The more time we spend practicing reading, the more our skills will improve.  In this article, the importance of frequent and voluminous amounts of reading are share through a practice called reading workshop.  Students are given opportunities to practice good reading habits through books of their choice and time to read them.  As pointed out in the article, "Teachers in a reading workshop are teaching readers for a lifetime."  This is done through brief mini-lessons that introduce a variety of skill and strategies that students are encourage to practice in uninterrupted independent reading time. "Teachers in reading workshops help children choose books, develop and refine their literary criteria, and carve out identities for themselves as readers." (Atwell)  I really appreciate this approach to teaching reading because it personalize the reading needs of individualized students and allows them to grow in a way that's more meaningful to them. Accountability for the time spent in reading workshop can be accessed through booktalks, read alouds, conversations and book logs.  Reading workshops encourages the kind of enthusiasm for reading that make reading fun and a life-long process.