In our district, teachers are working together at each grade level to write units of study for Reading Workshop. These units of study include sequentially organized sets of mini-lessons that focus on skills and strategies students are expected to use when reading independently.

I would encourage you to collaborate with colleagues at your grade level to plan your own units of study that incorporate the skills you expect of your readers. Many of our units are in-depth studies of a specific genre of text.

There are also some great books out there that include mini-lessons that can be used for a variety of grade levels:

• Revisiting the Reading Workshop: This Scholastic book has mini-lessons for the first 30 days.
• Workshops That Work!: This Scholastic book is geared toward grades 4+, but it also provides sequential mini-lessons for the first 30 days.
• Frank Serafini also wrote a book called Around the Reading Workshop in 180 Days. In the book, he provides month-by-month strategies for running a reading workshop across an entire year. Another great book that he has written is called Lessons in Comprehension. In it he includes 64 of the most effective comprehension lessons from his own teaching career. For primary grades, Kathy Collins's book Growing Readers is a great option for finding more ideas for suggested units of study throughout the school year.