“Nothing matters more than the mission of giving all young people access to the beautiful, important work that happens in reading and writing workshops.”
—Lucy Calkins
How do you support upper-grade and middle school readers if they are new to the norms and culture of reading workshop, particularly if they may also have missed some foundational instruction in reading fiction and nonfiction? How do you do this in a way that builds a strong reading community and strong habits and routines? How do you approach all this if you are new to the teaching of reading workshop? The Up the Ladder Reading units offer a very good place to start.
The Up the Ladder Reading units (one unit for reading fiction and one for reading nonfiction):
The new Up the Ladder units are designed for children in grades 3–6 who may not yet have had many opportunities to practice writing narrative, information, and opinion pieces, or might not have had those experiences in workshop-style classrooms. The units give these children opportunities to engage in repeated successful practice and to move rapidly along a gradually increasing progression of challenges. Frequent checkpoints channel kids to double-check that their work has gotten substantially better. At each of these checkpoints, they—and you—will see that their growth has been dramatic.
The Up the Ladder Units:
While the Up the Ladder units are designed to be precursors to the grade-level Units of Study in Opinion, Information, and Narrative Writing, 3–6, they also can be helpful in a variety of instructional settings, including summer school.
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