In Defense of Reader's Workshop in High School ELA Classrooms

1. Greater volume of reading for all. Reading practices reading skills, models good writing, builds world knowledge, increases vocabulary, and offers opportunities for critical thinking.  We want all students reading as much as possible!  But, even with my top preforming courses, we did not read more than seven novels a year.  The "good" students read these and might have still had time left to read for pleasure; meanwhile, the "bad" students read none of the assigned texts and possibly nothing else independently all year.  When I used a workshop approach, even students who had read zero books the year before read at least three titles.  My students who were addicted to books read closer to a book a week. 
2. Engagement via choice.   This one is self exploratory.  Who isn't more excited to study what he or she chooses?
3. Personalized attention.  When we read together, I counted on class discussion to cover the content of the reading.  Can't really do that when all the students were reading different books.  So, I had to devise a method for conferencing with students often.  Where in the old system some students might slip through the cracks, in this system, I talked face to face with each student at least once a week.  (We had a rotating two day schedule, so I only saw students two or three times a week). 
4. Greater focus on skills.  When we read a new book each month, the focus becomes the book we are reading.  We are "doing" Huck Finn or The Scarlet Letter rather than practicing skills that can be applied to all literature.  The students would think we were studying the novel like they were studying cell division or the Missouri Compromise; that is, as a set of facts to be remembered and ordered with some basic understanding.  However, just as the Science and History teachers have larger themes running through their fields, in ELA, spitting back the novel's content is not the goal.  Rather, I want my students' experiences with the text to build skills they will carry to their next critical reading.  With a workshop approach, I focused my mini lessons on the skills I wanted the students to have to tackle analyzing literature rather than limiting myself to lessons that got us through the text.  We spent a lot more time practicing ways to handle new vocabulary, take notes that went beyond plot summary, and pull ideas together to form thesis statement, to name a few.  And, best of all, the students had more practice on the skills, so when we did read a novel critically together and write an analytical essay, they preformed far better. 
5. Easy to use short texts like nonfiction articles, poems, and short stories. Since the students were all reading different books, we used short texts when we worked together.  Sometimes, they were read for homework, and other times they were short enough to be read in class.  When the focus wasn't on what book we were currently reading, it opened my thinking up to a wide variety of texts that did not need to be linked together as long as they allowed us the ability to practice skills.  Three consecutive classes, we could read a Shakespearean sonnet, a Bradbury short story, and a local newspaper op-ed, and despite their differences, we could focus on using context clues for unknown words or finding details that supported main ideas. 
6. No more beating a dead horse.  In the old model, every piece of reading had to be thought about critically with some type of activity to hold thinking.  Every reading assignment had to have class discussions.  We always ended with a big final essay.  Needless to say, it got tedious for the students by mid year.  When I switched to a workshop approach, only the two or three texts we read together did we investigate that deeply.  The point of the work stood out in contrast to the other reading: When we read informally for pleasure or information, we preform one set of tasks versus when we read literature critically with the clear intend to write an analysis, we approach it with a different set of tools.
7. Creates a community of readers.  When all the books we read were full class reads, our options were limited.  The school had to own the books and they needed to not be designated to another grade level.  I was usually the only person in the room who could endorse any particular title available.  With reading workshop, students were recommending books to each other constantly.  The students had clear favorite authors, series, and genres, and they enjoyed sharing their knowledge with each other.