It just happens to be the only way anyone ever became a reader. Our goal is for every child to become a skilled, passionate, habitual, critical readeras novelist Robertson Davies put it, to learn how to make of reading a personal art. Along the way, CTL teachers hope our students will become smarter, happier, more just, and more compassionate people because of the worlds they experience within those hundreds of thousands of lines of print. Do Not Have Permission To Edit Registry Xp on this page. We know that students need time to read, at school and home, every day. We understand that when particular children love their particular books, reading is more likely to happen during the time set aside for it. And we have learned that the only sure fire way to induce a love of books is to invite students to select their own. CTL teachers buy the best childrens literature we can find, conduct booktalks and bookwalks, and help our students choose books, develop and refine literary criteria, and carve out identities for themselves as readers. We get that its essential for every child to be able to say These are my favorite books, authors, genres, and characters this year, and this is why. I/51h35fKdJbL.jpg' alt='The Reapers Are The Angels By Alden Bell' title='The Reapers Are The Angels By Alden Bell' />Personal preference is the foundation, walls, and ceiling in building a reader for a lifetime. Starting in kindergarten, free choice of books is a childs right, not a privilege granted by a kind teacher. Our students have demonstrated that opportunities to consider, select, and reconsider books make reading feel sensible and attractive to children right from the start that theyll read more books than we dreamed possible and more challenging books than we dreamed of assigning them. Weve also learned that students need access to a wide, up to date assortment of inviting titles. Instead of investing in class sets of novels or expensive basals or anthologies, we make classroom libraries of individual titles our budget priority. Teachers read a lot of the books that we hope our students will, so we can make knowledgeable recommendations. We offer help when readers need it, and we teach children, one at a time, about books and reading in the daily, quiet conversations in our reading workshops. We understand that the only delivery system for reading comprehension is reading. When reading is meaning filled, understanding cannot be separated from decoding. The Reapers Are The Angels By Alden Bell' title='The Reapers Are The Angels By Alden Bell' />Reading comprehension is not a set of sub skills or strategies that children need to be taught to bring to bear once theyve learned to translate letters to sounds. When students are reading stories that are interesting to them, and when the books are written at their independent reading level, comprehensionthe making of meaningis direct, and kids understand. Human beings are wired to understand. As reading theorist Frank Smith put it, Children know how to comprehend, provided they are in a situation that has the possibility of making sense to them 1. Reading workshop is our best approximation of an instructional context that has the possibility of making sense to young readers a child sits in a quiet, book filled space, engrossed in a beloved book in the company of classmates who are reading and loving books, too, monitored by a teacher who knows about literature, reading, and his or her students tastes, strengths, and challenges. Because CTL is a non profit demonstration school, a place where other teachers come to learn about innovative methods, we work hard to attract a student body that represents a diverse range of socioeconomic backgrounds and ability levels, and we fundraise twelve months a year so we can set a tuition rate thats as low as possible. The goal is to attract a mix of students in whom visiting teachers can recognize their own. And they do, because CTL students are regular kids. They suffer ADHD and such identified learning disabilities as nonverbal learning disorders, visual processing difficulties, and dyslexia. Some kids come from homes with packed bookshelves others own only a few books. Maine is a rural state and a poor one, in the bottom third nationally in terms of per capita income. Only 6. 6 of jobs here pay a livable wage, and our students parents work hard at all kinds of occupations farmer, carpenter, house cleaner, store clerk, soldier, fisherman, gardener, postal worker, and housecleaner, as well as physician, minister, teacher, and small business owner. We do not believe that CTL students accomplishments as readers can be explained away as an anomaly. Ours is not a privileged population of students. This is what is possible for children as readers. Its also important to understand that reading workshop is not S. S. R. Sustained Silent Reading. Its not a study hall, where we watch the clock with one eye as we Drop Everything And Read. In reading workshop, we teach readers for a lifetime introduce new books and old favorites, tell about authors and genres, read aloud, talk with kids about their reading rituals and plans, and present lessons about elements of fiction, how poems work, what efficient readers doand dont dowhen they come across an unfamiliar word, how punctuation gives voice to reading, when to speed up or slow down, who won this years Newbery Award, how to keep a reading record, what a sequel is, what readers can glean from a copyright page, how to identify the narrative voice or tone of a novel and why it matters, how there are different purposes for reading that affect a readers style and pace, how to unpack a poem, how to distinguish between popular and literary fiction, how to tell if a book is too hard, too easy, or just right, and why the only way to become a strong, fluent reader is to read often and a lot. Reading workshop is one of the simplest and hardest things we do. Its also the most worthwhile. Students leave our school as literary, well above grade level readers. But they also leave smarter about a diversity of words, ideas, events, people, and places. Books and stories bring the whole world to a tiny school in rural Maine. When the readers grow up and leave the school, they recognize the wide world they encounter out there because it is already lodged in the chambers of their imaginations Spufford, 2. Sydney Jourard wrote, The vicarious experience of reading can shape our essence, change us, just as firsthand experience can. Experience seems to be as transfusible as blood 1. For students who know reading as a personal art, every day is a transfusion. Every day they engage with literature that enables them to know things, feel things, imagine things, hope for things, become people they never could have dreamed without the transforming power of books, books, books. Three times a year, the boys and girls at CTL help their teachers create master lists of the inviting, accessible books they love best. Bestselling fiction and non fiction books, ebooks and audio books. Ann Thwaite at Richmond Festival of Literature. November 2. 01. 7 0. Z2. 3 November 2. ZGoodbye Christopher Robin is drawn from Ann Thwaites acclaimed biography of A. A. Milne, creator of much loved characters Winnie the Pooh, Piglet, Tigger, Eeyore and Christopher Robin, who Milne.