Workshop models are a current trend in education and Writer's Workshop is a good place to start implementing the workshop model. Writing lends itself to the workshop model and is even used at the professional level as writers meet and conference and bounce ideas off each other.
This blog chronicles my experience implementing Writer's Workshop in a middle school classroom for the first time. This was an eye-opening experience and I learned more about students and their writing habits in this 14 week period than in 20 years of teaching middle school.
What is the Workshop Model?
Writer’s Workshop is an approach to writing that puts students in control of the writing process. The process includes modeling, direct instruction, teacher-as-facilitator, conferencing, and sharing. Using a workshop approach, students are engaged and motivated for a number of reasons. First, students are not directed to complete specific assignments as the goal is to write every day and for that writing to be self-directed. That is, students write in a journal style and can write anything from personal narrative, observations, wonderments, poetry -- virtually anything as long as writing is happening.
According to Steve Peha, founder of Teaching That Makes Sense, “In Writer’s Workshop classrooms, full class lessons are short and tightly focused on practical real-world issues. As in professional writing workshops, emphasis is placed on sharing work with the class, on peer conferencing and editing, and on the collection of a wide variety of work in a writing folder, and eventually in a portfolio. Teachers write with their students and share their own work as well. The workshop setting encourages students to think of themselves as writers, and to take their writing seriously (ttms.org).”
Lucy Calkins is a prominent voice in the writer’s workshop model. In an interview in Education Week, she noted that, “Teaching kids to write isn’t just something where you can turn down the lights, turn on some music, and say, “Write!” It takes really clear strategy instruction to lift the level of students’ writing. That requires knowledge—and also an understanding that teaching writing is a lot like teaching tennis or soccer, where you demonstrate, and then the kids go about their work, and then you coach (EdWeek_Calkins)."