A Reading Workshop 2.0 environment is
designed to provide teachers and students with digital and web-based resources
and technologies for reading, sharing, discussing, and analyzing children’s
literature. These resources provide new avenues for breaking away from traditional
ways of responding to one’s reading and new tools for accessing, sharing,
analyzing and discussing what is being read.
As readers
encounter children’s literature in new formats and platforms, the basic
processes of reading, sharing, discussing and analyzing texts will change in
some ways and remain the same in others. Because of these changes, new
instructional approaches and resources will be required to support the
development of young readers in a Reading
Workshop 2.0 environment. In the second half of this book I will share
specific instructional approaches and lesson ideas that take into account how
digital and web-based resources impact reading, sharing, discussing and
analyzing children’s literature.
Although these
processes blend together in actual practice, I will present them separately
here to provide some instructional approaches for supporting these processes
individually. In real life and in classrooms, when does reading not entail some
analysis, and when does sharing not blur into discussing? However, there are
enough distinctions among the four processes being identified to warrant them
being presented separately.
Let me begin by
briefly defining each of the four processes that will make up the second half
of the book:
1. Reading – The ways in which readers
read and access texts have changed drastically in the past ten years.
E-readers, tablets, computers, and smartphones provide instant access to a wide
variety of digitally based texts. Not only have the devices used to access
texts changed because of digital technologies, the types of texts made
available through these technologies and devices are different. Texts with
hyperlinks, visual images, embedded video segments, interactive components, and
new formats and design elements are commonplace. As our reading lives go
digital, we have to consider the ramifications for how we access texts and the
expansion of the features of the texts we access.
2. Sharing – As readers, we archive and
share what we read in new ways due to the resources available in digital
environments. Readers now have digital bookshelves that house their
collections, websites that keep track of the books they want to read, and chat
rooms for sharing reviews of the books they read, and communication
technologies for sending recommendations to their friends. Using digital
highlighters, readers can share what is important in a text with anyone around
the world willing to take a look at what they have highlighted. The ability to digitally
catalog what has been read gives us a different perspective on ourselves as
readers, and allows others to peer into our reading lives in new and exciting
ways.
3. Discussing – Whether we are
face-to-face or across the globe, we can now discuss our favorite books with
friends in real time (synchronous) or on our own schedule when we feel like
adding our thoughts to a discussion board (asynchronous). We can use video
conferencing technologies like Skype and Facetime to discuss ideas with other
readers in our schools and around the globe in real time. In addition, there
are many social media sites available for posting on-line reviews and
participating in virtual book clubs. In today’s digital and web-based
environments, we are able to discuss texts with different people, in different
ways providing readers with new perspectives and new opportunities to consider
what others think about the texts we read.
4. Analyzing – There are numerous digital
and web-based resources available for supporting readers’ analysis of the texts
they read. Multimedia software like Glogster and Wordle allows readers to
create and present interpretations in new and exciting formats. Technologies
can be used to take images apart and make comments on them, highlight sections
of texts, post analytical notes in the margins of texts, and provide ways to
closely read and interrogate print and digital texts. This last section
contains some of the most challenging, but also some of the most exciting,
resources and instructional approaches to analyzing what we read.
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