Designing Relevant Vocabulary “Warm-Ups” for Reading Workshop

This article represents a piece of the ongoing dialogue between Chris Walsh, literacy coach, and Dan Rose, eighth-grade English teacher, as they collaboratively examine the teaching and learning taking place in Dan’s English language arts classroom. Documenting detailed observations, Chris identifies Dan’s delivery of highly engaging, socially stimulating vocabulary minilessons. Dan, in turn, reflects on Chris’s observations, exposing his planning processes and beliefs about how middle school readers and writers learn best. By participating in numerous and varied opportunities to construct their own meanings, students will become more independent readers and writers.