The Five Components of Reading Workshop: Preservice Teacher Learning From Literacy Practitioners

During the fall semester of each school term for the past four years, I have taught an Early Childhood reading course at Albany State University. This is a graduate reading course, which was realigned in the fall of 2008 as a reading endorsement course. Initially, there were several options for completing the major assignment for the course, one of which was to conduct a reading workshop. The first year an individual student presented one for her fellow classmates. The second year the students asked if they could present the workshop as a group project. I thought that was a good idea and provided them with an audience: pre-service teachers who were enrolled in my content area reading course and my children's literature course. Since that time, I have made the group presentation of the workshop a requirement. Each year the presentations get better and better. The students have elected to present "The Five Components of Reading" workshop because it is emphasized in their reading endorsement course, which is relatively new to our campus. The National Reading Panel (2000) concludes that the five components (phonemic awareness, phonics, vocabulary, comprehension, and fluency) are essential elements for teaching students to learn to read. This article describes how my students used the panel's conclusions and recommendations from Armbruster, Kehr, & Osborn (2003) to design and present the 2008 workshop -- "The Five Components of Reading."