The Writing Workshop: Chapters 9, 10, 13

Now that we have covered just exactly what Writers Workshops are, its time to learn how to place them in action in our classrooms. Through these chapters I learned many important things on how to teach writing workshops in my classroom. Five main points that need to be remembered include: 1) Setting up the room to teach (environment) 2) How we live in that room (demonstration) 3) What we teach in focus lessons and conferences (Direct Instruction) 4) What investigations we plan (inquiry) 5) What we require as writing homework (potential of the world). I found some really interesting points that came from these five topics:

* The environment students are surrounded in inside the classroom should be enough for them to write about even without any instruction

* Writing should not be homework; there does need to be homework in writing workshop but it needs to come from observing the world and gathering ideas

* Ever act we make in our classroom teaches students. We do not have to necessarily write with students but just the act of carrying things such as notebooks shows students that we do write.

* One of my favorite quotes in chapter nine was "If it is a workshop, then all kinds of things need to be in that "shop" that students can work with as they go about their writing." -I like this because how can we expect students to write without giving them the materials necessary to do so.

After we have learned how to teach things we need to go back and look at what to teach. Usually about five different things are taught in a writers workshop. 1) Strategies (ways to do things), 2) Techniques (ways to fashion things), 3) Questions (ways to think about things), 4) Relationships (ways to connect things), 5) Conventions (ways to expect things). From these five topics some interesting things I learned was...

* Some of the best ways for students to learn strategies about writing are to observe past strategies of teachers or past students. Here they can see suggestions and try it on their own.

* We need to teach students important questions to ask themselves as writers that way they can manage their work and think about their writing in a different way.

* For some students connecting their writing to something else in the real world can help them better understand what they are doing as a writer. The relationship the book gave that I liked best was "Learning to read like a writer is like a seamstress visiting a dress shop."

In writing we need to pull students together and allow them to get focused back on the lesson again. Teachers can use an overhead or chart paper to write about the focus lesson. When setting the tone I found it interesting that as a teacher we need to show our students that we are both a writing mentor and a fellow writer. Interestingly enough, writing workshops are usually teacher centered. The teacher does the talking and explaining while the students watch and listen. We can get students involved though is by having them share. Any part that the student can input that lends itself to the lesson is interactive. To summarize and end the lesson as teachers we should look for evidence in students' work of their using the possibilities we are teaching them.

The Writing Workshop: Chapters 1-5

Chapters 1-5

Until reading these chapters in The Writing Workshop I was not familiar with this form of writing for students. In one of our previous classes we did teacher interviews with current elementary school teachers. My elementary school teacher that I interviewed discussed how she used writing workshops to integrate other subject areas into writing. She did not go into much detail about what the writing workshops were she just pointed out that she used them for integration.

The book made me realize that writing workshops can be very benefical to students because it allows them to write freely on their own and experiment with topics that are appealing to their interests. Allowing students the opportunity to write on their own about a topic that interests them is good for them because it allows them to just write without thinking about it too much. Students sometimes may get too caught up in factual information or trying to research information and turn it into a writing that just does not appeal to them. If they are able to chose the subject/topic to research and write about they are more likely to produce a more meaningful piece of work.

Students are given many opportunities to write throughout the day in many subject areas. Many would think that because of this writing workshops do not play a vital role in the day for the student. To many students writing workshop might be a time for them unwind and just relax. Writing for most people is a way to collect thoughts and gather all of the jumble going on inside ones head. For some students the writing workshop might be when they discover themselves as a writer. For the ones that do not enjoy writing because they are forced to write about topics may like this better because they can free write and not be pushed into writing about something they do not enjoy.

I think that writing workshop is something that i would like to incorporate into my classroom. As a student that was not a big fan of writing I feel like I may have liked it better if I was able to free write about other things that I found more satisfaction in.

Ray, K. (2001). The writing workshop: working through the hard parts (and they’re all hard parts). Illinois: National Council of Teachers of English.