What is Writer’s Workshop
Writer’s workshop is a teaching technique which invites students to write by rendering the writing process into a meaningful part of the instructional day.
Children internalize the writing process through daily exercises which includes the modeling and practicing of those activities that make non-writers write and good writers great. Students are exposed to the organizational techniques and think-out-loud thought processes of a good writer by the workshop instructor. Students are then asked to practice the art of writing within different generes of writing by responding to prompts about a favorite topic, small moments, creating a narrative or organizing their thoughts into a composition, structured with voice, tone, vivid language, powerful vocabulary and clearly demonstrates an understanding of grammar, writing mechanics and spelling.
There are 5 main components to Writer’s Workshop: mini lesson, status of the class, student time on task writing, conferencing, peer sharing/author’s chair.
- Mini Lesson is a 5-10 minute whole group activity. This may be as simple as doing a guided writing for a story, a how-to for revising existing content, or choosing an identified trend issue the workshop instructor observes in a student’s daily writing (weak vocabulary, for example)
- Status of the the Class is taking 5 minutes to find out where students are in the writing process and how they are progressing. The instructor posts a pocket chart with the student’s names on clothespins, indentifying where they are in the writing processing by having them move their name clip to the part of the process they are currently working on. This helps the teacher to know precisely where a student is: conference, write first draft, work in progess, revising, illustraing, final editing, or publishing.
- Writing and Conferencing is a 40-60 minute session where students are given time to brainstorm and conference one-on-one with the teacher. This helps students to feel inspired and be reassured that they are on track. Writing and Conferencing is also a time when revision and pulling more content from the students can take place.
- Final Draft is where the teacher should expect correct use of basic grammar, spelling, punctuation, even with a bit of guidance.
- Sharing and Author’s Chair takes about 10 minutes and can be done with a student reading to a partner or to the class. Instructors cannot expect to get through an entire class in a single block of time. Rather, a teacher should stagger students throughout the week so that by week’s end, everyone has been validated.
The best way to become a better writer is to write a lot. Writer’s Workshop gives students and teachers the opportunity to maintain a writer’s notebook that becomes an ongoing work in progress tool that helps a writer grow in revising, creating, engaging and taking ownership of the writing process.
