Launching writers' workshop

The most important part of the launch is setting the tone and creating a community of writers. Being a writer yourself and sharing your triumphs and struggles is the most powerful teaching. Listen to your students and encourage honest storytelling.
 
Another part of the launch is setting up routines and management structures. The essential structure of Writers’ Workshop should not vary from teacher to teacher; however, the management and routines of the workshop may. The focus lessons you teach during the launch will help your students understand how to function and carry on independently during Writers’ Workshop in your classroom.

Setting the Tone and Building a Community

• Discuss how writers think and write about their writing histories. (See Student Reproducibles.)
• Invite students to the rug and begin a storytelling circle. Share a personal story you can tell well, and then invite students to tell their stories.
• Read aloud wonderful literature that can serve as inspiration:
  • Owl Moon by Jane Yolen
  • Eleven by Sandra Cisneros
  • All the Places to Love by Patricia MacLachlan
  • The Leaving Morning by Angela Johnson

• Have students talk about previous writing experiences. What is their first writing memory? When was writing hard or easy?
• Bring in “artifacts” to provide a stimulus for getting started (photographs, treasures, etc.). Make a memory box. Use Wilfrid Gordon McDonald Partridge by Mem Fox as a model.
• Share examples of your own writing.
• Personalize Writers’ Notebooks or folders.

 
Introducing Routines and Management Procedures

• Teach the structure of Writers’ Workshop.
• Show students the materials in the writing center.
• Demonstrate getting/putting away writing materials.
• Explain what a writing conference is as well as the student/teacher roles in a conference.
• Show students how to transition at the beginning and ending of Writers’ Workshop.
• Create guidelines for Writers’ Workshop.

 
Next Steps: The Writing Process

• Brainstorm and generate a class chart of where writers get ideas. Ask students to use this anchor chart as a resource to find their own writing topics.
• Help students find the “small moments” in their lives to write about. Not every writing idea needs to be about a big, significant life event (e.g., birthdays, vacations, etc.). Read literature by Jean Little (Hey World, Here I Am!) as an example of a writer who does this.
• “Spy” on people and capture snippets of conversations to write down.
• Ask someone to tell you a story and then write it down.

 
Next Steps (particularly important for primary writers)

• Use pictures to tell a story. Model this with wordless picture books.
• Show how pictures and words go together.
• Model how writers approximate—do the best they can with pictures and/or words, and then move on.
• Discuss how authors visualize, making a picture in their mind before beginning to write.
• Teach students to craft representational drawings in order to tell their story.
• Share a story orally prior to writing.