writer's workshop

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writer's workshop
By Jen

Writer's workshop is simply an organized way of going through the writing process, giving students freedom in deciding what they want to write, and how far they want to take each piece. The steps are: prewriting, drafting,
revising, editing, and publishing. You can also talk about sharing and conferencing sort of as steps of the process. In my class, we use a writing folder, made of bristle board and split into three sections: Drafts, To be Published and Other (prewrites, record keeping, topic lists)...you can organize it though any way you want.
I find it is good at this point to brainstorm a list of

types of writing (letters, articles, poems, narrative, expository, etc). This allows the students to draw from a variety of types of writing when they are working individually later.

Then at the beginning of the year, we go through the whole cycle of writer's workshop together, using one type of writing as our model, so we will all, for example maybe write a cinquain. So each student brainstorms a list of topics they might want to write a poem about. They choose one. We look at examples of cinquains, discuss what a cinquain is, I provide a mini lesson about how to compose a cinquain, and then they are given time to draft. Some students may start one piece and then give up, and start another, others may like their initial piece right away. Next, together we move on to revision, and talk about what things we need to accomplish in this step: adding, replacing, moving, changing. You might introduce the idea of student conferences here, allowing them to pair up and make suggestions about eachothers writing. Next, you move to editing, using a checklist is often helpful for this stage...so students can check off items once they have finished looking at that element (capitalization, punctuation, spelling). You can have students peer edit as well at this stage. Next you move on to publishing. Discuss your expectations for a published piece of writing (typed? neatly handwritten? single spaced? etc).

Now students have gone through the process together. It is time to begin to let them work on pieces of their own interest and at their own rate. You can introduce mini lessons on all sorts of stuff as the year progresses, and as you see fit. You can always focus the students again, and have them write a specific type of piece, if you feel it is necessary.

Good luck