Workshop Model: Reading Mats

Jaimie Howe contributed this post. Click here to read more of Jaimie's thinking.

Click here to access a PDF of a Reading Mat.

As the year has progressed and we have been learning more and more about the Lucy Reading Units of Study, I have been noting specific components and resources that I believe are extremely beneficial.  Last month I wrote about Text Bands and Learning Progressions.  This month I would like to share a very simple resource, yet one that has proven to be essential to our K/1 students and teachers: The Reading Mat.  The great thing about this tool, is that anyone can implement it, whether you are using the workshop model or not. The reading mat is just an organizational tool to keep kids on track during independent reading time. Lucy states, “Stacking books on the reading mat allows kids to plan and be intentional about their reading.” This has proven to be true in all of our classrooms.  We have seen a huge increase in on task behavior and ultimately, volume of reading.

The reading mat is just a file folder with a red sticker/paper on one side and a green sticker/paper on the other - showing kids where to start (green) and stop (red).  Students make a stack of their books on the green side and place them onto the red side after they have finished reading each book.  If they read all the way through, they then work backwards, reading them again.  You will notice, however, in the pictures below that one reading mat has quite a few more books than the other.  This was an inconsistency we noticed throughout our district.  It was important for us to clarify for teachers that students reading at a kindergarten or first grade level need to have at least 10-15 books at their independent or instructional reading level to place in their mats along with poetry and sight words.  Students in classrooms where 10-15 books were in each book box were reading a much higher volume than those with only 5-10 books. Challenge your students to build their “reading muscles” by reading all the way through their mats and back every day.