Workshopping the Canon

Workshopping the Canon introduces practicing and preservice English language arts teachers to a process for planning and teaching the most frequently taught texts in middle and secondary classrooms using a workshop approach. Demonstrating how to partner classic texts with a variety of high-interest genres within a reading and writing workshop structure, Mary E. Styslinger aligns the teaching of literature with what we have come to recognize as best practices in the teaching of literacy.


Guided by a multitude of teacher voices, student examples, and useful ideas, workshopping teachers explore a unit focus and its essential questions through a variety of reading workshop structures, including read-alouds, independent reading, shared reading, close reading, response engagements, Socratic circles, book clubs, and mini-lessons (e.g., how-to, reading, literary, craft, vocabulary, and critical), as well as writing workshop structures comprising mentor texts, writing plans, mini-lessons, independent writing, conferences, writing circles, and publishing. This book is for every teacher who has struggled to make beloved classic texts relevant to today's young readers.