Humble Servant of the People

The Writer's Workshop

 

Using the Writing Workshop

Most of the basic material a writer works with is acquired before the age of fifteen.

                                                                                               - Willa Cather

Students often come to a writing task with infinite stories to tell and examples to share, butequally infinite fear of not writing "correctly." It is this fear that prevents them from exploring with language and finding their own voice in their writing. It is this fear that we English teachers must help students negotiate in order not only to write, but also to compose with sophistication, style, and ease.

Writing instruction is just like instruction in any other skill; it takes practice, false starts, mistakes, collaboration, adjustment, coaching, and more practice, that finally leads to speed, endurance, and agility. Writing workshop applies the coaching model to writing instruction with the writer's notebook (daybook) being at the heart of the student's writing life. The writer's notebook is a place to generate ideas, explore thinking, and play with language. It is a safe space where writing can be bad without the judgment of the red pen (or green, or purple, or pink as the case may be). Often when working through an idea or reflecting on their understanding, students need that space to be right or wrong or to write through confusion into understanding. The writer's notebook then becomes an integral part of the writer's daily life. If we want students to develop writing skill, that is how we have to think of them, as writers. The daily routine of the classroom should therefore revolve around reading and writing for learning.

Writing Workshop provides that cohesiveness within a framework that allows greater flexibility for differentiation in product, process, content, and environment. Part of that differentiation is in the individual writing conference, the coaching of writing. Studying mentor texts together, playing and practicing with language, sharing and discussing, and revising also provide opportunities for the teacher to stand beside the student writer giving encouragement and praise. As the opening quote indicates…students may already have the content; we have to help them "think out loud on paper" with their own voices.

As we think of our students as writers, we begin to see that the elements of writing workshop are all means of formative assessment where we are supporting the development of the writer, not simply delivering content. When we model writing with our students, we are sharing our processesand showing that we value the writing we are asking them to do. When we conduct mini-lessons, we have already informally assessed a need among students for review of a particular feature or convention of writing. When we use mentor texts, we are helping students to expand their repertoire of language structures. When we share and respond to writing, either peer-to peer in small writing groups, peer-to-peer in partner response, or teacher-to-student in individual writing conferences, we are assessing and immediately using that assessment to improve the writing. Even better for us as time-crunched teachers is that we are not taking home stacks and stacks of papers to grade, yet students are generating stacks and stacks of writing and ideas and developing their writing "muscles."

The inevitable next questions are 1) how to teach grammar in writing workshop and 2) how to "classroom manage" with writing workshop? The answer to both will depend on the needs of the students. Again, writing workshop provides a framework of practice with many possibilities for differentiation. After the teacher assesses needs, a mini-lesson on a given grammatical principle might be the only grammar instruction needed outside of the writing conference. Once a routine is established, students will come to value the time they get to write, and they will value their writer's notebooks. They will come to see themselves as a community of writers.

Transform your students' English Language Arts learning experience by inviting them to act like, think like, and become writers. Writing Workshop offers an umbrella under which differentiated instruction, formative assessment, and composition theory coincide in pedagogy designed to develop students' critical literacy. With this approach, we can affirm Vygotsky's claim: "what a child can do today with assistance, she will be able to do by herself tomorrow," and lead our students into 21st Century learning.

Sources:

Branon, Lil, et.al., “Thinking Out Loud on Paper: The Student Daybook as a Tool to Foster Learning.” Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann, 2008.


Fletcher, Ralph. “Breathing In, Breathing Out: Keeping a Writer's Notebook.”. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann, 1996.


Urbanski, Cynthia. “Using the Writing Workshop Approach in the High School English Classroom.” Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press, 2006.


Author, Jennifer Sharpe, holds a Bachelors in English Education from Barton College and a Masters in School Administration from North Carolina State University.  Her teaching credentials include NC licensure in 9-12 English Language Arts and K-12 English as a Second Language, as well as National Board Certification in Adolescence and Young Adulthood English Language Arts.  After eleven years teaching English at all levels, elementary through college, she began working with teachers to deliver embedded professional development for literacy across the curriculum as an Instructional Coach.  She currently serves as Secondary Program Specialist for the Nash-Rocky Mount Schools in Nashville, NC.  To keep connected with the art of teaching, Ms. Sharpe teaches English online through the North Carolina Virtual Public School.  Actively involved in professional organizations, Ms. Sharpe is also the Region 3 Co-Director for the North Carolina English Teachers Association and Associate Director/K-12 Liaison for the Tar River Writing Project, affiliate of the National Writing Project at East Carolina University.  

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