writer's workshop

My school is in it's third year of implementing writer's workshop.  Each year, our students know more about writer's workshop and have improved stamina and skills, which is really exciting.  In kindergarten, however, it's a different story; with a large free and reduced lunch population, our students come with a huge range in pre-academic skills like drawing, letter formation and recognition and knowledge of sound letter recognition.

Even though it's January, some of my third and fourth graders still frequently struggle with generating or brainstorming ideas on what to write about.  (We did do a "detour" from Lucy's plan and do expositiory writing for a while.  So, we're just getting back into the swing of narrative writing.)  I know part of the problem is that many of my students have so much to worry about every day that they see many stories in their life as being too old and therefore not relevant.  But I cannot do anything about that.

Do you find that peer editing is helpful with your elementary writers?  If so, please share some ideas and suggestions for what you do!!  :)

Attached are Writers Workshop Book Lists that I created labeled by grade level.  Each list is differentiate by Lucy Calkins Units of Study as well as Comprehension Skills and is useful for anyone needing to teach a specific type of literacy lesson.

This article appeared in the Sunday 08/30/09 NY Times.

This article is mostly about one teacher's application of writing workshop a la Nancy Atwell's In The Middle.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/30/books/30reading.html?_r=2&em

I was fortunate enough to hear Nancy Atwell speak in like 1991 at a Capital Region Reading Association Conference at the Desmond Americana. She had really long hair then and she was all Portlandy and cool. I loved her descriptions of her students' writing development during her writing workshop.

While driving back to Guilderland HS on the bluest, sunniest, most glorious summer day you could imagine, I was seriously questioning my good judgment.  We don’t get many of these days here in the Albany NY area.  I enjoyed my time at the Reading Institute but the Writing Institute had to be even better to pass the test for me.  I get squirmy thinking about sunshine and blue skies if I am not completely enraptured with what I am experiencing.  Three days of squirming would have been unfortunate at best.

My school became a Writer's Workshop school this year. We were trained by the staff developers at Teacher's College Reading and Writing Project.

Our students have made amazing progress this year. They have really bought into the idea of being writers. It doesn't hurt that we frequently tell them they are writers or that we have author's celebrations at the end of each month.

Part of what makes the curriculum so rich is the books we read and later re-read like writer's. (I wrote a lesson plan about how mentor text lessons tend to go: click here.)

Check it out --at the bottom of the page-- and add these books to your writing curriculum!

I love the author David Shannon, who's well known for No, David. Yesterday, I read his book Duck on Bike to model writing a WASL (Washington's state assessment) short summary with three main events. As I read I emphasized the inner thinking and thought to myself, "This would be a great mentor text to show inner thinking. There's inner thinking on almost every page!" :-) All the animals have their own opinions about Duck's trick, which they only share in their thoughts.Want to try it?

What are some good mentor texts to use in Writer's Workshop?  As a new teacher, finding books that pair well with certain comprehension strategies and writer's craft is a continuing challenge.  Thank you librarian.  Thank you internet.

Let's share our ideas! And successes!

Dialogue:

Frog and Toad

Owl at Home

Poppleton

Because of Winn-Dixie