What do you need to build a community of writers?
JOY
Students learn that writing is an enjoyable and powerful process over which they have ownership to express ideas. Students have choice over topic, form, and finished product of their writing. During Writers’ Workshop, students learn that powerful writing is taken from what you know and care about. They also research new topics to write about subjects that interest them. During Writers’ Workshop, students share their work with classmates and/or other audiences. These sharing times may be used to receive guidance from other student writers or to celebrate finished work. Providing students with choice and a forum for sharing teaches them that writing is a joyful and empowering experience.
RISK-TAKING
In Writers’ Workshop, students are encouraged to take risks when writing. They try new genres, styles, and write about new ideas. Students are encouraged to use a wide range of vocabulary even though they might not have the exact spelling, or might use a word in an incorrect context. Teachers and students understand that writing is a messy process and that writers experiment and explore as they sculpt thought. Finished products are not the only pieces of writing that are valued. Students’ growth as writers and their willingness to experiment are of equal importance. Teachers model risk taking as they write in front of the students by experimenting and exploring their own writing.
TIME
To write well, students need to write frequently. They need to know that they can count on this time every day. When students understand that they will be writing each day, they think about their writing during other parts of the day and come to Writers’ Workshop with a clearer sense of what they will accomplish. (Students in first grade and beyond need to write for 30–45 minutes per day, 4–5 days a week.)
TONE
The tone of a successful Writers’ Workshop is sometimes described as a “quiet hum.” An observer looking across the room sees most children quietly working on their own pieces of writing; a few students are reading out loud to themselves or a partner to revise and edit their writing; others may be reading touchstone texts of mentor authors to help craft their own pieces. The teacher is quietly conferring with individuals or small groups, or actively listening to students as they share a piece of writing.
DEMONSTRATION
The teacher demonstrates all facets of writing by modeling writing in front of the students: “The teacher teaches most by showing how he/she writes” (Graves, 1994). The class also identifies touchstone texts and mentor authors to examine how published pieces were crafted.
HIGH EXPECTATIONS
All students can write. Even in the primary grades, students can use pictures to convey their stories and gradually begin to add text as they are developmentally ready to do so. Teachers show they believe this and convey this message during each conference. Teachers explicitly model writing strategies and conventions and expect that all students will improve their writing skills over the course of the year. Some pieces of writing are never published. Students spend considerable time crafting, revising, and editing their work, and then select the pieces they want to publish. The published pieces will then be celebrated with some sort of Author’s Celebration.
CLEAR PURPOSE
Students learn that writing is a powerful medium and that people write to shape and communicate their thoughts, ideas, and opinions. Students understand the power of writing and real purposes for writing in their daily lives. During Writers’ Workshop, students may be writing memoirs to share with family members, drafting letters to local newspapers, creating a sign for a school bulletin board, or writing a review to share opinions of a book or a movie. There are many real purposes for students to use writing in their daily lives.
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.
Possible Texts to Use for Launching Writers’ Workshop
The books below tell stories, share memories, show author’s craft, and have characters who write and have interesting ways of looking at the world.