One of the ways we have been learning to interact with books during Reading Workshop is to act them out. We ask questions like:

Who are the characters?
Which one will I be?
What are they doing?
How are they feeling?

After practicing this strategy several times within the workshop setting, the children have now started demonstrating it independently. This is a perfect example of what the Reading and Writing Workshop model strives for, a 'model of gradual release'. This means we strive to teach the children reading and writing strategies that they can apply at any time on any book or piece of writing. The more strategies they learn, the more independent they are as readers and writers. I caught this video clip of Jan and Alex one morning while we were waiting for more children to arrive. They went through at least three books together during that morning, completely engaged in reading together and recreating the stories.

Later that morning when I told the class about the wonderful things I saw Jan and Alex doing, we all decided to rename the activity and call it, the "Book Adventures" activity! Everyday this week, going on "Book Adventures" has been a center during Literacy, and everyday the children are eager and excited to act out more books with their classmates!

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