[MOSAIC] Basal in Readers Workshop?

[Wendy Jensen]

We use the Houghton Mifflin basal but I use a reader's workshop approach in my second grade classroom teaching the comprehension strategies you mention. (Reading With Meaning and Mosaic of Thought changed my teaching life!)  I don't use the basal stories in the order they are presented.  I try to find how (if at all) some of them would work to model a particular strategy.  I even kept some of my old basals because I used some of those stories to teach the comprehension strategies.  Just last week, I modeled inferencing by making predictions with the story Ruby the Copycat from our old basal.  I read aloud and stopped at one point and had all students predict and tell the thinking behind their prediction.  Then we shared our predictions and read the rest of the story.  Our discussion was really great about our thinking behind the prediction.  The next day the students read the story with a partner to practice some fluency strategies.  I use the basal a lot for partner reading and sometimes even small groups.  I don't use the stories in order and I don't read them all...but I'm using the basal, which I'm supposed to do!  It's worked for me so far!

Wendy/2nd/IA
  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: ckmet at mail.usf.edu<mailto:ckmet at mail.usf.edu> 
  To: Mosaic: A Reading Comprehension Strategies Email Group<mailto:mosaic at literacyworkshop.org> 
  Sent: Friday, February 22, 2008 6:58 PM
  Subject: [MOSAIC] Basal in Readers Workshop?


  Hi everyone,

  My administrator decided in the beginning of the year that it was okay for
  us to forgo our purchased basal series (Open Court) and only use
  literature in our readers workshop (woo hoo!!). Flash forward to now and
  we are told that we must use them, whether it be for phonics, literature,
  etc. . . basically just use them, all this money was spent on them ("what
  we're supposed to do" is changed at least twice a year, so you can imagine
  our frustration!).

  Can anyone give me any advice or pointers or how they use their basal in
  their classroom in conjunction with quality literature? We structure our
  readers workshop based on comprehension strategies (i.e September we work
  on making connections etc.)If anyone out there, uses Open Court and a
  readers workshop setting, that would even be more helpful.

  Thank you!






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