Kathy Bumgardner

Juli and I were lucky enough to attend another workshop by Kathy Bumgardner. She is full of great ideas. If you are looking for ideas and help for Reader's Workshop, her website is a GREAT resource. Click HERE to go to her site. We learned a lot from her last year. Our favorites are:

SUMMARY TOOLS - the summary approach where students follow the prompt to summarize a reading selection. The students really took to the one for fiction literature - Someone Wanted But So Then.  When asking a student to summarize last year and they would give me that blank look (you know the one!), I would just say Someone Wanted But So Then. They would immediately be able to completely give me a summary.  It is the perfect support for students learning to summarize on their own.  This along with other great stuff can be found by following the link to her website - FREE!

FICTION & NONFICTION ROLL UP - another great resource we used a lot last year.  We printed each component on a separate piece of paper, taped together, and laminated. Students would "walk" down the roll up giving the information for each component. We did it as a class together at first so students became more confident and began to do this on their own.  This is another thing you can get directly from her website.

This year she had a ton of new ideas.  My favorite though is COLLABORATIVE CONVERSATION STARTERS because this helps solve a problem I had last year.  Whenever I would have the students Turn and Talk about the selection we had just read, the conversations were so lame!  I got really frustrated with the situation and would attempt to model my expectations, but nothing seemed to make much difference.  She has created the cards for the both the reader and the listener to use when discussing a text. They have to use one of the prompts when discussing the text, which helps reduce lame responses where the student is just going through the motions.  The prompts range from "I wonder" to "I believe ____because..." to ""Can you show me the text evidence that shows____?"  If you don't want to make cards for each student, this concept could easily be put into an anchor chart when you are first introducing workshop expectations.

Her website has so many amazing things (free to download) like literacy extension cards, literacy CD wheels, think clouds, fix up strategies, and so much more!  If you are in need to support in reading, this website is a wonderful resource for you.  We will hopefully be seeing more of Kathy this year and will be sure to pass on any great tips she shares.  Let us know if you have any questions about what we have shared with you. We would love to help!
Heather