The book, “A Guide to the Reading Workshop,” was written by Lucy Calkins, a literacy expert, author of twenty books, and one of the founders in the creation of the “workshop” approach to learning. Calkins created Teachers College Reading and Writing Project in 1981 and has trained thousands of educators across the nation. She is passionate about sharing the way children learn through reading and writing and her methods are “widely regarded as foundational to language arts curriculum throughout the English-speaking world” (Feinberg, 2007, p. 27). Calkins begins her book with an in-depth look at the essentials of reading instruction, focusing on the intimacy and self-connections educators need to create a balance in the selections, coherence and design of their reading curriculum. She highlights her vision…show more content… Calkins spends a majority of her time motivating the reader to dig deep inside and become thoughtful when planning, motivating, and coaching students to develop a love for reading that will last a life time. She reminds us that learning to read doesn’t happen overnight and it isn’t like a magic trick. Kids and teachers will become better readers if they spend time reading and engage and connect with what they read. Once a child or any person becomes a reader their lives have the ability to change forever. After reading and processing the contents of this Guide to Reading Workshop, I have rekindled that passion for teaching reading that has been suppressed by stress, standardized testing pressures, fitting in content objectives, and doing things in my classroom I thought were beneficial to my students becoming better readers. In my opinion, Lucy Calkins touches on key elements that would help any educator teach reading in their
