Building readership

a reading workshop experience

Abstract

The project aims to study the effects of the Reading Workshop on the “target reader” who, in our case, are children with difficulties in learning to read and write. This is a case study using the clinical-qualitative method. It describes a Reading Workshop which uses, as its main tool, the reading of stories from children’s literature from which space opens up for different forms of participation by the children, such as dialogue, drawings, narratives amongst others. The Reading Workshop approximates to the Potential Space postulated by Winnicott in which the authors consider as a clinical field the story reading sessions where the contact with children is achieved by recognizing the importance of holding and the attitude of psycho-pedagogic support. The results show that the Reading Workshop created human situations in which it was possible to reflect upon the actual living conditions of children. It also allowed them to build their cognitive skills and an interest in the meaning of the words read, giving new meaning and stimulating the desire to learn to read and write.