What is Writer's Workshop?
Writing Workshop is a method of writing instruction developed by Lucy Calkins and educators involved in the Reading and Writing Project at Columbia University in New York City, New York. (Calkins, L (2006). A Guide to The Writing Workshop, Grades 3-5. Portsmouth, NH: First Hand). This method of instruction focuses on the goal of fostering lifelong writers. It is based upon four principles; students will write about their own lives, they will use a consistent writing process, they will work in authentic ways and it will foster independence.
Writing Workshop is designed for use in all grade levels. Each grade level has specific units of study tailored to meet developmental and curricular needs. Students have a large amount of choice in their topic and style of writing. The teacher acts as a mentor author, modeling writing techniques and conferring with students as they move through the writing process. Direct writing instruction takes place in the form of a mini-lesson at the beginning of each workshop and is followed by a minimum of 45 minutes of active writing time. Each workshop ends with a sharing of student work.
Process
Establishing a consistent writing process that the students work through is one of the main principles of the Writing Workshop. Each student will move through the process at their own rate, however it is best to set a deadline for each step so that each writing unit is completed in a timely manner. Each unit takes about 1 month to complete.
- Generating Ideas (1–2 days)
- Collecting writing entries (5–10 days)
- Choosing a seed idea (2–3 days)
- Planning the draft (1–2 days)
- Revising to change the content and quality (1–3 days)
- Editing to improve grammar (1–2 days)
- Publishing the piece to share it with the world (1–3 days)
- Writing Celebration (1 day)
Structure of the Writing Workshop
1. Signal the beginning of Writing Workshop
- Use a consistent signal to begin workshop. Some ideas are chimes, a bell, turning on smallChristmas lights, signing a song or using a special clap.
2. Direct, explicit mini-lesson (See mini-lesson information below)
3. Writing time
- During this time the teacher guides the young authors through writing conferences, meets with small groups to teach specific writing techniques and/or works one-on-one with authors. Students may also work with a partner during this time with teacher permission.
Mini-lessons
Mini-lessons should be about 10–15 minutes in length. They follow the same structure each time; Make a connection to a previous lesson, teach a new writing technique, and have the students practice the technique right there with your guidance.
- using dialog to show an action
- stretching out actions
- adding internal thinking
- elaborating on physical descriptions
- starting a story with an action
- starting a story with dialog
- end with a sound
- using circular ending
- creating imagery through words
- narrowing a story, making it more focused
- choosing a seed idea
- creating a strong ending
Conferring
Lucy Calkins (1994) has described conferring as, “the heart of our teaching” (p. 189) in the Writing Workshop. Conferring in the Writing Workshop takes place during the time when students are actively writing. The teacher circulates around the room, meeting with individual students or student groups to discuss their writing progress. The conferences are often short, typically lasting anywhere from two to seven minutes (Ray, 2001, p. 158). Calkins (1994) has described a three-step process for facilitating these conferences: “research, decide, teach” (p. 224). The teacher begins the conference by asking probing, open-ended questions to ascertain the student’s current focus in his/her writing work. Once the teacher has identified an area of need, the teaching can begin. The teaching often includes critical feedback for the student, a short time in which the student and teacher practice the new skill or strategy, and a link to how the new skill or strategy will improve the child’s future work as a writer (Anderson, 2000, p. 26). Another component of the conference is record keeping. The teacher, and sometimes also the student, can make anecdotal notes about the content of the conference. This will allow the teacher to refer back to previous notes and monitor students’ growth as writers.
Writing Workshop Aligned with the Common Core
Lucy Calkins and her colleagues from The Reading and Writing Project at Teachers College have recently written a new guide called A Curricular Plan for the Writing Workshop ( Heinemann, 2011). This aligns the units of study she has recommended in the past with the new Common Core State Standards. “ This curriculum reflects the genres for writing that are spelled out by the Common Core Standards and gives children several opportunities to write in those genres: narrative, persuasive, informational, and poetry. “ (p.2 A Curricular Plan for the Writing Workshop). The new units demonstrate more of a focus on informational, persuasive writing, and revision than the original unit plan developed by Calkins. Written by grade level, this resource takes the school year month by month and guides teachers towards instructing with a balance of narrative and nonfiction writing. Minilesson ideas, additional resources and celebrations are discussed as well, with a focus towards “lifting the level of student work” in every unit.
4. Sharing of student work
Possible Mini-lesson topics are:
“The interesting thing is that in teaching writing, we often unmask our own processes in readers and writers, thinking aloud in front of our kids so they can learn how good readers and writers think about texts (Calkins, Hartman, White, 2005, p.62). The teacher knows it is important while facilitating the start of the conference to begin with a positive comment about the student’s writing piece. Calkins believes that the instructor reads the student’s writing and then focuses on an area to give feedback about. One way to get better on forming instructional needs is to take time to look at “ student work outside of class time and thinking about the decision you might make for this student” (Calkins, Hartman, White, 2005, p.62).
This chart shows students how Writer's Workshop is time is divided.
Everything you need to make writer's workshop folders for your class with extras!
Knowing where and how to start Writer's Workshop can be very difficult. This website has some great tips to get you started.
Keep your anecdotal records for Writer's Workshop for each student by unit. Log all of your conference information on this form which notes a Strength, Teaching Point and future conference notes for each process - prewriting, drafting, revising, editing and publishing.
Writer's workshop begins with a mini-lesson. Mini-lessons are short 5-15 minute lessons in which the teacher addresses writers' needs. Often these mini-lessons are developed because of specific things the teacher has noticed in students' writing. Mini-lessons are conducted as a whole group. This link has examples of mini-lessons.
Small Moments Anchor Chart.
Click Here
One of the first activities for Writer's Workshop could be to personalize their Writer's Notebook. Students can take home the notebook to record their small moments in.
One of the first activities for Writer's Workshop could be to personalize their Writer's Notebook. Students can take home the notebook to record their small moments in.
This is an anchor chart that we created for Writer's Workshop. We brainstormed a list of things we could write about.
This is an example of a good visual to know where students are in the writing process.
When teaching persuasive writing, I like to use the OREO.
Here is an example of a "How to" Anchor Chart
This anchor chart can be used to teach kindergarteners to label. Then allow children to label previous day's picture.
Book Club Summary
Section one "The Essentials of Writing,” is about
getting Writer's Workshop started and to communicate to your students the
excitement you have for writing. On the first pages she said that “writing is
not desk work, it is life work!” We all three loved how she was so
enthusiastic about her writer's notebook. She did an amazing job communicating just how special that
notebook is to her. On the first days of school she told them "you
have so much to say," "you are authors." This really gives
the students ownership of their writing. Isoke used writer's workshop as
a time to demonstrate the role writing plays in her life and to invite students
to join her in living the writerly life. We like how she establishing
norms in the classroom, rather than just writing expectations on the board.
This is definitely an area in which I have failed. We liked how she
compared how the writing process to a seed.
The first part
dealt with the foundations of literacy (writing in the home, nursery school and
kindergarten). She emphasized that oral language “takes place on a
non-sequence, whole-task basis.” We wouldn’t dissect oral language
into component parts and we shouldn’t drill young children on all the
sounds of the alphabet before inviting them to write. We should treat early
writing with respect just like we would a baby’s first words. She says when
launching a writing workshop in the primary-level classroom teachers to accept
whatever they may put down. Children don’t need to be afraid they will “fail”
but need to be accepted and praised for what they can do. We liked
how she addressed the students as “writers” Calkins also stresses that
children’s drawing is rehearsal for them. It plays an important role in
that it provides supportive scaffolding within which can help children write.
They can return to their drawing and the picture carries most of the child’s
meaning. Calkins later discourages drawing, as a way of rehearsing for
writing because she says that no solution works for every child and not
solution should works forever. She says we should watch for signs
indicating that a child no longer needs to weave drawing and writing together.
She states that drawing is a predominant form of rehearsal for many 1st graders,
but talking is the most effective form of rehearsal for 2nd grade.
We all three liked the idea of notebooks in primary grades. They have it
with them throughout the day and go home with them at night. It is a
place for gathering bits and pieces of their lives. She also states that
peer conferences may not get better writing, but longer texts.
Calkins went on the discuss Writer’s Workshop in the upper elementary grades.
We discussed how a lot of students are no longer comfortable to really get in
to their writing due to peer pressure and bullying. We all agreed that
students at this age need us to care about them and what is going on in their
lives outside of the classroom. Building a community is especially
important at this level of Writer’s Workshop. When building the community
we must demonstrate our love for reading and writing. This is the age to make
the reading/ writing connection. Students at this age still apply some of our
values to their lives. We agreed with Calkins when she said that
launching Writer’s Workshop with students in secondary grades is difficult.
The teacher in Secondary Writing Workshops must build one on one relationships,
seize the moment and teach on your toes, encourage students to voice themselves
through writing, and see the energy in the classroom and go with it.
We agreed
that in order for Writer’s Workshop to work it must be predictable.
Teachers must be organized, and set-aside particular times every day. “It
is almost impossible to have a successful writing workshop if students write
only one or two times per week. We like the components of Writer’s
Workshop. We discussed the mini lesson, work time, conferencing, share
sessions and publication. The mini lesson is just what it says.
This is the time that is set aside to “teach” all the students something. We
shouldn’t expect for every student, however, to use what was taught that in his
or her papers. There is not a set curriculum on what to teach in the mini
lessons. Teachers must decide what to teach based on the needs of the
students that she is teaching. A problem that teachers face with mini
lessons is that teachers often struggle with reverting to the “old” way of
teaching at this time. We all agreed that we must remember who ever is
doing the most talking is doing the most learning.
We had
a lot of favorite things about the book to discuss when we met. One
of the sections we all agreed upon was the section on mini-lessons of
revisions. Crystal told us that she especially enjoyed the phrase by
William Faulkner, “Writing a first draft is like trying to build a house in a
strong wind” (Calkins, page 209). The sense of urgency he discusses
is what it is like when students are writing their first draft. They
need to get the ideas all down on paper quickly before they forget what their
ideas were in the first place. I will list a few of the recommended
strategies for topics of mini-lessons here:
· Write about a subject
in a different genre
· Rework a confused
section- the ending, the title, etc
· Take a long draft and
make it shorter
· Take a short entry of a
draft and expand it
· Imagine a purpose and
an audience for it
· Reread the draft
evaluating what works and what does not
· Read the entries/draft
and think, ”Where’s the mystery here?”
· Put the draft aside and
return to it another day
· Take a jumbled piece
and rewrite it in sections or chapters
These are just a few of the strategies that we found would
be most helpful to our age group of students. (Calkins, pages
209-210)
In the
chapters on ‘conferring’, one phrase stood out to me that I shared with my
group. “Creation and criticism- these are central to our work with
clay and blocks, and they are also central to our work with words.” (Calkins,
page 222) In these chapters of the book, Calkins was discussing how
important it is to question themselves about their writing. As
readers, we should ask a question or two about our drafts. No matter the age,
questions like these can be used over and over.
· What have I said so far?
· How do I like it? What
is not so good that I can fix?
· How does it sound? How
does it look?
· How else could I have
done this?
· What am I going to do
next?
These are some questions that can be discussed during
teacher-student or peer conferences to get a student to learn to interact with
their own writing. The goal for the teacher, over time, is to be
unnecessary or unneeded. We want students to be successful at self-questioning.
We
enjoyed the different stories and anecdotes in this book. There was
a particular story about a little boy named Noah on pages 262-263 that was
meaningful to me so I shared it with my book club group. The story was in
the chapter on publications. Calkins was sharing how the 5 year old
had written a 10-page book, with words and a picture on each page. After
reading his book to the class, his teacher asked him what he had written on the
back of the book. He told her that it was “nuthin”, just “sumfin”
for the library. He had put symbols for the section of the library
that it would go into for the librarian. This is humorous, yet
significant, because he already sees himself as an author. As
Calkins says, “His teacher has not only helped him develop skills, she has also
helped him develop a self-concept as an author.” (Calkins, page 263) We
want our students to not only act as writers, but to become one. To
see him/herself as an author causes the children to make connections with the
books they read. When they make connections, they are learning.
Our group read pp. 285-517 from Lucy Calkins’ book this
week. Chapter 18 dealt with editing and the best way to approach it during
writer’s workshop. She discussed how many kids come to us thinking
writing is a display of spelling, penmanship, and punctuation and they will
focus more on that than the content. We all three have seen this
happen in our classrooms. Students will just freeze up on spelling a word
or where to put punctuation and then forget what they are even writing
about. Calkins stresses in this chapter that we need to help them
write freely and unselfconsciously. No one learns well while feeling
afraid and ashamed. We need to let students realize it’s ok to make
editorial errors as they write; all of us do, and then we correct them as we
edit. She states that the best thing we can for their syntax,
spelling, penmanship, and use of mechanics is to help them write more often and
with confidence. When she launches writer’s workshop, she tells them their
notebooks aren’t meant to be displays of perfect spelling and
handwriting. It’s a place for deep thoughtful ideas and careful
observation. Our group agrees that young students need to focus,
above all, on what they are saying and let spellings come out naturally. We
liked her quote, “This is a rough draft. It is meant to be
rough. There will be a time for making it
beautiful.” Some other ideas/comments we liked when writing rough
drafts:
-Let them use a pen or pencil
-If too much time being spent making letters perfect, she
might say,” No erasing allowed- Just cross out and keep going.”
-She might show students one of her first drafts
-When children keep asking how to spell a word, they keep
asking because you keep giving them the answer. They need strategies
for spelling words. Say the word. How many parts in the
word? Now listen for the sounds in the words.
It was also interesting the research
she did between two third-grade classrooms comparing how they were taught
writing. Ms. West taught mechanics through daily drills and workbook
exercises. She started at the very beginning, teaching simple
sentences, periods, capitals. She did pretests and post-tests, but
the children rarely wrote. In Ms. Howard’s class, the children wrote
every day and chattered as writers do, about conventions of written
language. When Calkins met with the “writers” who had not had formal
instruction in punctuation, they could explain an average of 8.66 kinds of
punctuation, whereas writers who had studied punctuation every day through class
work and drills could only explain 3.85 kinds of punctuation. Even
more important, children in the writing classroom liked
punctuation. Calkins stresses that when children view themselves as
writers, like students in Ms. Howard’s class, they see punctuation
everywhere. They start noticing it and becoming familiar with
it. The nonwriters described punctuation by trying to remember the
rules they’d been taught. How many of us do this? We get bogged down
writing as adults because we can’t remember the rules or how to spell a
word. Many of us were not taught to write “freely” and our first draft was
our final draft. We wanted it perfect the first time.
She discussed one way to help
students edit is by giving them a checklist to go over before they turn their
work in. The one she gave was very simple and we can see ourselves using it
with our students. When conferencing with students, notice the things a student
can do and only pick out one or 2 things for the student to work on as a
writer. We liked the idea of having a sheet of paper in their
writing folder and jotting down what you notice and the one thing that student
is working on. Calkins also stresses that kids need to know that
when authors finish their writing, they move on to another piece.
We discussed that poetry is a
powerful genre because of its condensed nature. Every child in the classroom
can be a poet, because poems can be very short. We liked how she allowed the
children to use pieces from their notebooks to turn those in to poems.
We all loved the section on
Making Memoirs Out of the Pieces of Our Lives. Virginia Wolfe said, “A memoir
is not what happens, but the person to whom things happen.” We all agreed that
Memoirs will be a great way to really get to know our students, because we will
learn their feelings, ideas, and insights rather than just reading about an
event. The stage of writing memoirs is described by Randy Bomer as the stage of
“shoving kids out of the nests.” He says this because they are forced out of
their notebooks into a draft. They suggest that the easiest way to do this is
by setting a deadline for a draft.
In chapter 25, Calkins discussed how
we used to do research from an encyclopedia, but today research starts out with
what we experience and what we know instead. She said we should tell
our students to seek out new life experiences and relationships, which will
help them to learn more, and to find more to write about. We enjoyed
the quote from Jean Fritz in this chapter, “As human beings, we thrive on
astonishment. Whatever is unknown quickens us, delivers us from
ourselves, impels us to investigate, inspires us to imagine.” We
should watch out for surprise and mystery, these things will make for good
nonfiction stories.
She discussed how we should create
conditions in our classrooms to help the ‘learning’ happen. We can’t
‘make’ students learn, but we can encourage them to ask questions, to notice
and wonder, and to inquire about the world around them. Writing is a
way to do these things. Writing throughout the day can be used to develop
meaning and compose ideas about different topics. Some ways to use
writing that interested us were:
· Writing to learn
journals – add short journal writing activities into the classroom throughout
the day to help them develop their thoughts and ideas
· Take a few minutes to
write down what we are thinking about a topic – this helps reel them back in if
they have tuned out of a whole-class discussion
· Have them summarize the
‘essence of the issue’ – use these summaries to get them actively participating
in the class discussion
· Write down what we know
or wonder about a topic before you start discussing a new one
· They can use writing as
a tool for thought
· “The main thing we’re
talking about is…” – is helpful to stimulate a whole-class discussion
· “The main thing I’m
talking about is…” - is used for individual self-motivation
· Writing can encourage
students to ask questions and problem-solve in any content area
· Write to support their
reflections on their guesses and predictions during lessons
Calkins describes ways to make our
students into active learners through their writing in this
book. She talks about how much our teaching matters, and what a big
responsibility it is to teach our students wisely. We discussed how
important our teaching is, and how we want to use more of the writing
techniques from this book to grow as teachers. We are teachers
because we love our students. How better to show them our love for
them, than by expressing our love of learning through writing?
"Writing is not desk work, it is life work!"
Lucy Calkins
Lucy Calkins
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