Writer’s WorkshopJennifer Evans

Assistant Director ELA

St.Clair County RESA

Evans.jennifer@sccresa.org

http://www.protopage.com/evans.jennifer#Untitled/Home

What is a Writing Workshop?

Why use a Writing Workshop? –

Research

How do you implement a

Writing Workshop?

WriteWell©

Agenda

Writer's Workshop is a highly effective format for process writing instruction that incorporates authentic practices within a consistent structure. As students write within the Workshop model, they have an array of choices that may include (but are not limited to) topic, genre, ideas, organization, and tone.

What is a Writing Workshop?

As in a professional writer’s workshop, each student in the class is a working author.

The teacher is a writing professional and peer coach, guiding authors as they explore their craft.

Instead of spending the majority of class time on spelling tests, grammar worksheets, handwriting practice, and other isolated sub-skills of writing, Writer’s Workshop is designed to emphasize the act of writing itself—students spend most of their time putting pencil to paper, not just learning about it.

Writer’s Workshop Format

Mini-Lesson(10-15 min.)

Independent Practice with Conferring

(30-40 min.)

Sharing( 5-10 min.)

Connection with

Yesterday’s lesson

Ongoing unit of study

Mentor Text / Student work

An experience

Teaching Point

Explicit Instruction

Model

Create anchor charts

Active Engagement

Try out the new strategy

Watch / Participate in demonstration –

Shared Writing

Plan work out loud

Link

To ongoing work

Practice

1. Mini lesson

To – With – By Model

Modeled Writing

The teacher writes in front of the students demonstrating a writing strategy, skill or convention of written language

Teacher often shares her thinking as she goes through the writing process.

Teaching Point

Teacher & students collaborate to write

text

Shared Writing

Active Engagement

1. Procedural (how to get materials, how to confer, etc.)

2. Writer’s process (strategies writers use and techniques for revising a piece, etc.)

3. Qualities of good writing (information to deepen students’ understanding of literary techniques: scene,

point of view, strong language, leads and endings, etc.)

4. Editing skills (information to develop their understanding of spelling, punctuation, and

grammatical skills)

Types of Mini lessons

New information takes time to sink in, and many teachers now realize that in order to learn something well, students have to use it for a while on their own without the fear of being negatively criticized. That’s why we teach “mini” lessons, so students have the majority of their class time available for applying what they’ve learned to their own work.

2. Independent Practice / Conferring

Linking

Independent Practice with Conferring

30-40 Minutes

Students work independently while the teacher meets with small groups or individual students• Conferring Talking Cards

Possible mid-workshop teaching point

• Occur naturally when the teacher notices something that needs clarification or further explanation to help students as they write

ConferringResearch

• Ask “What are you working on as a writer?”

• Have the student read aloud his/her work

Decide

• Synthesize what is learned

• Decide what to compliment: “What has this child done that I can name and make a fuss over?”

• Decide what to teach: “What does this child use but misuse? or “What is nearly there in his or her writing that I can help them with right now?”

Compliment

• Point out writing strategies the child used well

• Say “I like how you…”(give specific example)

Teach

• Teach only one thing

• Teach to the compliment

• Teach to today’s teaching point

• Negotiate a strategy

When choosing your teaching point think: Of all the options I have, what can I teach that will make the biggest difference for this writer?

“What are you working on as a Writer?”

P 6-8 from “Welcome to a Writer’s Workshop” by Steve

Peha

Conferring

Diagnose Student Needs

From: Writing Workshop The Essential Guide by Ralph Fletcher and JoAnn Portalupi p. 96

•He knows to include dialogue inside quotation marks

•He uses commas to set off a name in the middle of a sentence

•He knows how to write simple sentences

•He understands that proper names require capital letters

First, notice the skills the student

uses correctly:

What do we notice?

•He knows that proper names need capital letters, but he’s inconsistent in applying this rule.

•He also seems confused when a name stretches across more than one or two words (ie. Pear of Aces is written “Pear of aces”)

•He understands that dialogue needs quotation marks, but he doesn’t understand how to use the comma to identify who is speaking.

•It appears he isn’t aware of paragraphing at all, either in terms of dialogue or as an organizational tool in writing.

Second, think about

what his errors

teach us:

•Since he has partial knowledge of the rules of capitalization, it makes sense to start there. (Show him how you decide which letters need to be capitalized when a name includes a collection of words. You’ll be talking about titles as well since the same rules apply.)

•He is also ready to learn about combining two short sentences. (Show him how he could do this with a number of places in this piece he could apply this skill.)

•Because he shows an understanding of comma use in a sentence, he’s probably ready to expand his knowledge of other ways commas can be used.

Next, select one

or two skills to

teach him when you confer.

What shall it be?

Example

What Can We Learn From Her Writing?

To determine what she was learning, I asked her to respond to the following:

[1] For each of the six traits, pick one thing from your paper that you like best, and tell why you like it.

[2] Pick specific parts of the piece to talk about. [3] Use the vocabulary from the Six Traits criteria

for each trait to help explain your reasoning. [4] Give lots of details to support your opinion.

Commentary With One-on-One Reading/Writing Conference

http://www.scholastic.com/teachers/top-teaching/2011/04/reading-and-writing-workshop-virtual-tours-each-component

Typical Conference Video

Guided Writing

Teacher works with a group of students

with similar strengths & needs.

During interactive writing, the teacher and the students may “share the pen.” The class may share ideas and write a piece together. Or, the students and teacher may write back and forth with one another, possibly in journals, on charts or sticky notes.

Sharing is the most instructionally valuable part of the class, other

than the writing time itself.

Students are influenced much more by their peers than they are by us. When a student reads something to the class and gets a

particular reaction, they really take it to heart.

Graves suggests that students focus their audience’s attention on one specific aspect of their work by saying something like: “The name of my piece is…. I’d like you to listen for… and tell

me what you think about it.”

3. Sharing

Sharing5-10 Minutes Notice Question Personal Connection Compliment and Suggestion (glow & grow)

Partner

Small Group

Whole Group

Working together as a team, make a list of the essential

standards you expect your

students to learn by the end of the

year or by the end of each unit.

Create a checklist to monitor

progress and for student use. (examples

appendix K and L)

Determine how your team will

accommodate the various skill levels

in your classes.

Using PLC’s to Make it Work

Status of the Class can be done every day, but if you don’t want to take the time for it,

once a week will probably be enough to make it work for you.

One teacher sets up a pocket chart and labels each row with one of the stages of the Writing Process. Then she takes her student’s pictures

and moves them from row to row as they progress on their pieces. This allows her at any time, and from any place in the room, to glance at the chart and immediately know where all of

her students are in their pieces.

Record Keeping

Checklist / Anecdotal Records

http://www.heinemann.com/shared/onlineresources/e00871/uos85x11researchbase.pdf

Why Use a Writing Workshop?

Kelly Gallagher, Author and Teacherhttp://www.kellygallagher.org/index.html

“Assigning writing is

easy. Teaching writing is

really hard.”

“We need to teach our

students to read like writers and

write like readers.”

The most effective strategy to improve writing…

Increase the amount and quality of writing.

Successful Implementation of Writer’s Workshop

          

How Often

• Everyday• Everyday• Everyday

How Long

• KDG – 45 minutes

• 1st Grade – 45 minutes extending to 60 minutes

• 2nd – 12th Grades – 60 minutes

When

• Beginning the first day of school

• A single block of time at the same time everyday

Management

• Same format used everyday

• Same rules and procedures used everyday

• Keep it simple

Why

• Consistency

• Consistency

• Consistency

Grades 1-5 K staple small unit booklets for their notebook

Specific directions for grades 2-5 in WriteWell

Write everyday

Teacher needs to have their own writer’s notebook and commit

to using it, even if only for a few minutes a day (Use your drafts to share with students to help instruction during minilessons)

Start with Notebooking

What Should I Write? Three…

◦ Times you laughed really hard◦ Times you were in physical pain◦ Memorable Moments◦ Topics that interest you

Circle the one that you could tell the best story about

Tell your story to a partner Write your story in the writing section of

your notebook Share

What Should I Write? Notebooking

WriteWell© Follows Writer’s Workshop Format

Mini-Lesson(10-15 min.)

Independent Practice

with Conferring

(30-40 min.)

Sharing( 5-10 min.)

Everything you need is in WriteWell©

WriteWell© Minilesson Example:

Navigating the Website WriteWell©

◦ http://www.sccresa.org/toolsforschools/curriculumtools/writewell/

◦ Select logo

◦ Enter school log in and password:Temporary Log in:Temporary Password:

Show Teachers in Action

www.sccresa.org

This will take you to your grade level page.

Take time to review the “Writing

Workshop Look-Fors” and “Teacher Self Reflection for

Writing Workshop”.

Determine where you are by

highlighting what your consistently do on both documents.

Set goals for where you would like to be

by the end of the year.

Plan what you need to do to achieve

your goals and what support you will

need.

Self Reflection

Writing Workshop Look-Fors

Day 1: Review/Introduce

the concept

Day 2: Model Choice Lesson

Mini lesson

Conferring

Sharing

Day 3: Observe/support

in classroom

The PD Plan

Questions?