Expectations for Reading
1. Find books, authors, subjects, and themes that matter to you, to your life, to who you are and who you
want to become.
2. Keep a list of your territories as a reader: authors, subjects, purposes, and genres.
3. Try new authors, subjects, purposes, and genres; expand your reading schemas.
4. Recognize that there are different modes of reading and different stances readers take in regard to
different kinds of texts.
5. Develop and articulate your criteria for selecting and abandoning books.
6. Go inside your books and respond to the writing you are reading; decide what is working and needs
more work in the books you read.
7. Write a letter at least once every two weeks in your reading journal about what you think and notice
about the writing you are reading and in response to friends’ letters to you.
8. Read as much as you can, as joyfully as you can.
9. Read for at least 25 minutes, five nights a week.
10. Maintain a chronological record of the books you finish reading or abandon.
11. Create an organized binder of writing and reading mini-lessons.
12. Take care of the books I provide you. Return each book you borrow to the classroom library.
13. Establish and work toward significant, relevant goals for yourself as a reader each quarter.
14. Take a deliberate stance toward reading and responding with your whole heart and mind.
15. Work as hard in reading workshop as I do. Live other lives and learn about your own, see how other
writers have written, acquire their knowledge, escape, imagine, think, connect, contrast, travel, ponder,
laugh, cry, love, and grow up.
Rules for Reading Workshop
1. You must read a book. Magazines, newspapers, and comic books don’t have the chunks of text you need
to develop fluency, and they won’t help you discover who you are as a reader of literature.
2. Don’t read a book you don’t like. Don’t waste time with a book you don’t love when there are so many
great ones out there waiting for you.
3. If you don’t like a book, find another one. Abandon it! Browse, ask me, a friend, or a librarian for a
recommendation.
4. It’s all right to reread a book you love. This is what readers do!
5. It’s okay to skim or skip parts if you get bored or stuck; readers do this, too.
6. Record every book you finish or abandon on the form in your portfolio. Collect data about yourself as a
reader, look for patterns, and take satisfaction in your accomplishments over time.
7. Understand that reading is thinking. Do nothing to distract me or other readers. Don’t put your words
into our brains as we’re trying to escape into the worlds created by the authors of our books.
8. When you confer with me, use as soft a voice as I use when I talk to you: whisper!
9. Read (and write in your reading journal) the whole time.
10. Read as well and as much as you can!
Expectations for Writing
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Find topics and purposes for your writing that matter to you, to your life, to who you are and who you want to become.
Keep a list of your territories as a writer: topics, purposes, audiences, genres, forms, and techniques.
Try new topics, purposes, audiences, genres, forms, and techniques.
Make your own decisions about what is working and needs more work in pieces of your writing. Be the first responder to
your writing.
Listen to, ask questions about, and comment on others’ writing in ways that help them move the writing forward.
Produce at least three to five pages of rough draft each week and bring at least two pieces of writing to completion every six
weeks.
Maintain a record of the pieces of writing you finish, and file finished writing chronologically in your portfolio.
Sometime during the year produce a finished piece of writing in most of the following genres: a narrative, a research
report, an argumentative essay, a literary analysis, three to five free verse poems, a memoir, an essay, a short story, a book
review, a song.
Attempt professional publication.
Recognize that readers’ eyes and minds need your writing to be conventional in format, spelling, punctuation, and usage.
Work toward conventionality and legibility, and use what you know about format, spelling, punctuation, and usage as you
compose.
Keep an individual editing list that you check your writing against when you edit and proofread.
Take care of the materials, resources, and equipment I’ve provided for you.
Take a deliberate stance toward writing well: try to make all of your writing literature.
Work as hard in writing workshop as I do. Re-create happy times from your life, work through sad times, discover what you
know about a subject and learn more, convey information and request it, parody, petition, play, explore, argue, apologize,
advise, sympathize, imagine, look and look again, express love, show gratitude, and make money.
Rules for Writing Workshop
1. Save everything: it’s all a part of the history of the piece of writing, and you never know when or where you might want to
use it.
2. Date and label everything you write to help you keep track of what you’ve done (e.g., notes, draft #1, brainstorming).
3. When a piece of writing is finished, staple everything together, including the drafts, notes, lists, editing checksheet, and
peer-conference form, and file it in your permanent writing folder.
4. Record every piece of writing you finish on the form in your portfolio. Collect data about yourself as a writer, look for
patterns, and take satisfaction in your accomplishments over time.
5. When drafting, skip lines or type double-spaced. Both will make revision, polishing, and editing easier and more productive
for you.
6. Draft your prose writing in sentences and paragraphs. Draft your poems in lines and stanzas. Don’t go back into a mess of
text and try to create order. Format as you go.
7. Get into the habit of punctuating and spelling as conventionally as you can while you’re composing: this is what writers do!
8. When composing on the computer, print at least every other class period. Then read the text with a pen in your hand, away
from the computer, and see the work with the whole, rather than a part at a time on the screen.
9. Get into the habit of beginning each workshop by reading what you’ve already written. Establish where you are in the piece
and pick up the momentum.
10. Understand that writing is thinking. Do nothing to distract me or other writers. Don’t put your words into our brains as
we’re struggling to find our own.
11. When you confer with me, use as soft as voice as I use when I talk to you: whisper!
12. When you need to confer with peers, use the conference corner table and record responses on a peer-conference form so the
writer has a reminder of what happened.
13. Maintain your proofreading list and refer to it when you self-edit.
14. Self-edit in a color different from the print of your text.
15.Write as well and as much as you can!