Readers' Workshops: Bridging Literature and Literacy

Helen Holmes is Director of Communications Studies at the University of
Calgary.

This is a collection of accounts by Calgary language arts teachers of
their experiences in teaching reading using the Readers’ Workshop
approach, which was developed by Nancy Atwell in In the Middle: Writing,
Reading, and Learning with Adolescents. By examining their own reading
practices and reflecting on how their own enjoyment of reading came
about, they have developed an approach that fosters those practices and
builds a love of books in their students. The contributors deliberately
eschew orthodoxy, and are appropriately diverse in their approaches to
teaching students of various ages and backgrounds. However, they do
share a belief that students should make their own choices and spend a
lot of time reading, talking about books, and recommending them to
others. In short, they believe in encouraging all those things that
parents who love books instinctively model for their children.

Written by and for teachers, these accounts, not surprisingly, contain
much “teacher talk.” Some readers may find the persistent
anecdotes—relating to such things as “personal growth,”
“development,” “sharing of excitement,” “enrichment,”
“embracing communities of learners,” “journeys of discovery,”
and “transformation”—uncomfortably close to those somewhat
saccharine and off-putting tales of religious conversion, no matter how
much they might share the values and goals the writers espouse.

Nevertheless, the book contains clear explications of principles, many
mini-lessons, accounts of classroom strategies and practices, and a good
bibliography. Teachers wishing to adopt the Readers’ Workshop
approach, as well as those already converted, will doubtless find all of
it useful.