Choice & Voice

Book excerpt: What we allow our students to read tells them which stories we value—and which we don't. Give students the power to develop reading lives that will endure beyond school walls. Collaborative Reader Workshop allows for student choice in reading, writing, and speaking; provides an authentic audience for student work; strengthens academic ELA skills; builds a wider school community of readers; and fosters lifelong reading habits. Fleck and Heinemann offer teachers a clear model to establish this interactive reader workshop model in their classrooms as well as tools to get them started. Readers will have a reinvigorated excitement about independent reading and justification for its relevance in the classroom.