Getting Started with Writer's Workshop

When I first started the Writer’s Workshop process in my classroom, I was reluctant and had reservations about the teaching method. I started the block and noticed my mini lessons were too long, the students weren’t writing, there was no sharing, and no one knew what they were doing, including me. So we bungled through some mangled version of Writer’s Workshop. Then, on a professional development day, my colleagues and I were having a collaboration meeting and were free to discuss any topic. I suggested Writer’s Workshop since I was struggling and found they were struggling as well. We discussed our impressions of what the workshop should look like, what we knew about the workshop model, what we knew about Writer’s Workshop. Someone even had a copy of the book that was recommended at the start of the year, Lucy Calkins The Art of Teaching Writing. So, after the meeting, off I went to restructure and re-plan my Writer’s Workshop. The first step in my plan was to dedicate a solid block every day to writing. I have a 90-minute literacy block and was committed to using 45 minutes for reading and 45 minutes for writing. Now conscious of the time, I started the workshop.

I had a perfect group of students to use as guinea pigs. I explained what we were doing and that I had never done it, but together we were going to figure out the writer’s workshop. Thus, we started our journey.

Our first order of business was to establish a schedule for the workshop. The components included a model or mentor text, a mini-lesson, journal writing, conferencing, and sharing. We eased into the workshop using the mini-lesson and the journal writing as a jump off point. The mini-lesson had to stay under 10 minutes according to the “experts” and I really was forced to stay focused on a single skill or even just a part of a single skill. During these few introductory weeks, I rehashed and remodeled grammar lessons from earlier in the year. I already had all the tools and materials, so it was relatively easy to create lessons (not to mention the students could use the review). Even these small grammar lessons, I learned quickly, had to be broken down. For example, I could discuss sentence forms, but I should keep it to one type for each lesson. That is a lesson should be presented for simple sentences, one for compound sentences, one for complex, etc. Therefore, sentences could potentially be 4 to 7 different mini lessons.

After that, I was at somewhat of a loss for ideas for mini lessons that were laser-focused and fit into a 10 minute time slot. The students actually gave me the ideas for the first few weeks of the mini lessons.

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The week before we left for break, I had reviewed the writing rubric. The students in my first period class suggested the mini lessons focus on the components of the writing rubric. Home I went to plan a week’s worth of mini lessons (less than 10 minutes) on the first domain of the rubric: Focus.

My lessons were a little clumsy in the beginning, but the students were very patient. The way I prompted them through a lesson, they prompted me through my first few mini lessons. My goal, in the beginning, was to try to maintain the time limit and stay under 10 minutes. Since we were concentrating on Focus, students were writing opening paragraphs that would keep their writing focused.

Our other concentration area was journal writing. To begin, I provided students with directed writing with many choices. So, students wrote, and I left them alone with their writing. Sometimes they asked me to read what they wrote, which I gladly did without giving criticism and making mental notes (which I later jotted down) about their writing strengths and weaknesses. These notes would be used for future mini lessons and conferences with students when we reached that point in the process.

In the brief professional development (which was more like an overview) on writer’s workshop we had at the start of the school year, one bit of information that stands out is that students would be in different places in the process at different times. In other words, while one student was plodding away at a piece of writing, another might still be in the prewriting phase. I took this advice to heart and allowed students to work at their own pace. It didn’t take long to noticed that there were certain students whose own pace was “stop.”

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My lessons were a little clumsy in the beginning, but the students were very patient. The way I prompted them through a lesson, they prompted me through my first few mini lessons. My goal, in the beginning, was to try to maintain the time limit and stay under 10 minutes. Since we were concentrating on Focus, students were writing opening paragraphs that would keep their writing focused.

Our other concentration area was journal writing. To begin, I provided students with directed writing with many choices. So, students wrote, and I left them alone with their writing. Sometimes they asked me to read what they wrote, which I gladly did without giving criticism and making mental notes (which I later jotted down) about their writing strengths and weaknesses. These notes would be used for future mini lessons and conferences with students when we reached that point in the process.

In the brief professional development (which was more like an overview) on writer’s workshop we had at the start of the school year, one bit of information that stands out is that students would be in different places in the process at different times. In other words, while one student was plodding away at a piece of writing, another might still be in the prewriting phase. I took this advice to heart and allowed students to work at their own pace. It didn’t take long to noticed that there were certain students whose own pace was “stop.”

Since we have access to Chromebooks every day, I gave students the option of keeping an electronic journal or a paper-and-pencil journal. Many opted for electronic. After two weeks, I was more deliberate in the journal time and circulated around the room to check in with students. I found some students were not writing but watching YouTube videos, shopping, checking grades, and performing other tasks on the computers. These students needed redirection and the new rule was that if you were on a cite other than your journal, you would be switched to pencil-and-paper. After that, almost every student was writing (although there were still a few who needed another push).

After a few weeks of mini lessons (some excellent, some okay, and some that totally bombed) and journal writing, we were feeling more confident with the workshop model. We added another component: sharing. I split my time between circulating during journal time and writing my own entries. When we started the sharing component, I shared something I had written first. I was surprised at how many students were willing to share their writing. After a few days, I no longer needed to share as more than half the class were eager and willing to share their writing. (The sharing varied with assignment and day as I later learned.)