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The Reader's Workshop is an organizational framework established by the National Council of Teachers of English and the International Reading Association and connects to a unique reading campaign that has placed Saint Paul on the leading edge of encouraging reading and supporting national standards.
Addressing Critical Reading Skills
Through the various activities of its daily one-hour workshop structure (opening meeting, work period, and closing meeting), Reader's Workshop addresses the following critical reading skills addressed in the Report of the National Reading Panel (2000):
- Phonemic awareness, the recognition that spoken language consists of a sequence of speech sound units (phonemes)
- Phonics, the understanding that spelling is related to speech sounds in systematic ways
- Fluency, evidenced in automatic word recognition and rapid decoding
- Comprehension, expressed by summarizing, paraphrasing, inferring, and making connections
- Vocabulary, a broad range of word knowledge that includes not only a growing bank of known words but also understanding of prefixes, suffixes, synonyms, antonyms, etc.
 Primary (K-3) teachers supplement Reader's Workshop with a daily, thirty-minute Language Skills Block to meet their students' need for a systematic program of explicit instruction in the sounds of the English language (phonemic awareness) and the sound-symbol relationship (phonics). Reader's Workshop reinforces those skills for both primary and upper elementary students and provides ample opportunity for teaching the higher level reading skills of fluency, comprehension, and vocabulary.
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