Writer's Workshop: Space, Challenging, Publishing..

When discussing writer’s workshop, there are many factors that get discussed such as what to write and how to facilitate writing. However, the actual make up of the classroom is something that needs to be discussed too!

            I think it is very important to have a classroom that is set up to help students. One thing that stuck out in the chapter was the fact that the teacher needs to be interacting with students all over the classroom. Sometimes I have seen that teachers take on the role of the typical teacher that sits at her desk and interacts with students from one place. However, I really enjoyed the idea of the teacher walking around and having meetings with individual students at their desks or where they are in the classroom. This way, the teacher takes on the role of being active in the workshop, not just sitting back watching the students work.

            Another idea that I really liked was the fact that the classroom needs to be utilized when doing writer’s workshop. By this, I envisioned my future classroom having station type places where students could move around the classroom in order to gain the most out of writing time. A lot that I have seen is done by students sitting at their desks not talking. I believe that this does not facilitate good writing because students need to be interacting with each other, conferencing and gaining ideas from each other. By having a quiet time place as well, students can get away from the talking and be by themselves.

            Writing workshops are challenging. I definitely agree. There are many factors that create a positive writer’s workshop, and I believe that creating this positive feeling takes a while to create and a lot of work and effort by the teacher, and the students. I am excited to work hard and see my hard work pay off when my students create a piece of work that they are proud of and want to present.

            Publishing is a topic that I never really visited when I was in school. I would work on one piece of writing, fix a little while I was going through, but I would just say I was finished. I never really understood going back through and editing and revising. However, I now see the importance of this, and I now see that I need to help students see the importance from the beginning of the school year. By having students publish many pieces, I am assisting the students in learning the best way of how to publish and be proud of their work. Sharing their published pieces will also assist in their development of becoming writers and will increase their motivation and self-confidence. 

Conferencing, Sharing, and Assessment/Evaluation...

            Conferencing in a writer’s workshop is extremely important, as I have read in our book as well as witnessed in my placement classroom. Having that one-on-one time with a student is a great way to give individual assistance to students as well as showing the students that you care about what they are doing and how they are progressing through their writing. In my placement classroom, my teacher has individual conferences with students. This seems to be very effective because the teacher is able to provide instruction to this one child, and the child may be at a different level than other children. Conferencing has grown in importance to me throughout this semester and while reading this book because I never really understood conferencing. Now I realize that there are 4 components (research, decide, teach, and record) and each component is as important as the next. As stated in the chapter, it is important for the student to do most of the talking because we want to know about his writing and his progress. The way to get the student to talk is to ask open-ended questions, which sometimes may be difficult to do. Keeping the conference to two to seven minutes was a shock to me because I thought that students needed more conferencing time. With this short time, the student and teacher get to the point, and the teacher is able to provide short instruction to help the student at the point I the writing that he is in.

Having students talk during share time is a very essential part of writer’s workshop. I have seen talking in my writer’s workshop go over very well, and I believe that this comes from practice from the students and many examples from the teacher. I believe that sharing is hard for some students to do, but talking through their work is a great way to get better and gain more confidence. The different methods that are mentioned in the book (simple response share, survey share, focused share, and student as teacher share) seem to work very well for writer’s workshop. The main method that I have witnessed is the survey share where students are to pick out certain words or examples from their work that fits in with the prompt the teacher has given. For example, my placement classroom has been working on nouns and verbs, so during share time, the students pick out nouns and verbs to tell to the class.

Asking questions is a very essential portion of writer’s workshop. As stated, questions usually fit in the best with conferencing because the teacher is able to ask questions that are directed to a particular student and that is relevant to a particular student. I believe that questioning and evaluating student’s work is a very imperative part of writer’s workshop. Student evaluations can be very effective too because the students are able to step back and look at their work and where they put in the most effort to see what they enjoyed the most. Self-evaluation can be tricky, but with a little structure and honesty, I believe that students can gain a lot from it. 

Great Books Used in Class Today...

1. Animal Poems by Valerie Worth and Steve Jenkins

2. You Are Weird by Diane Swanson

3. Imogene's Antlers by David Small

4. An Extraordinary Egg by Leo Lionni 

5. The Great Kapok Tree by Lynne Cherry

6. Posy by Linda Newbery

7. Don't Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus! by Mo Willems

8. The Littlest Skyscraper by Scott Santoro

9. The Mysteries of Harris Burdick by Chris Allsburg

10. I am a Dog, I am a Cat by Donald Hall

11. The Giving Tree by Shel Silverstein

12. Dear Mrs. LaRue: Letters from Obedience School by Mark Teague

13. Hey Little Ant by Phillip Hoose

14. What Do You Do With a Tail Like This? by Steve Jenkins

15. Actual Size by Steve Jenkins

16. Living Color by Steve Jenkins

17. The Vegetables We Eat by Gail Gibbons 

Focus Lesson: 1st Grade on Punctuation!

For one of my classes, I was asked to create a focus lesson using a mentor text for a writer's workshop! Here it is...

Focus Lesson

Rationale:

I will be teaching the importance of punctuation because students need to be able to see that the type of punctuation that they use makes a difference in the way the reader reads their writing. I will be teaching students the importance of using the appropriate punctuation marks based upon what they are trying to state, or how they want the reader to read the sentence that they created. Students will also be evaluating their writing to see how their punctuation affects how they read their writing, and thus, they will be able to revise their sentences to demonstrate the appropriate punctuation. This learning is important because the ending punctuation of a sentence really makes a difference in the way that the reader reads the sentence.

Standard:

ELA1W1 The student begins to understand the principles of writing. The student

l. Uses appropriate end punctuation (period and question mark).

 

Mentor Text: Punctuation Takes a Vacation by Robin Pulver

Lesson Description: (5-10 minutes)

The teacher will have already read this book prior to the writing workshop so students have a background of the text. During this lesson, the teacher will read the pages that are marked in the book previously.

First page: The teacher will talk about how each punctuation mark has its own rule and will read with inflection based on the punctuation mark how each sentence sounds based upon the punctuation mark.

Second page: The teacher will read this page, which is a few sentences put together without using any punctuation marks. The teacher will show the students that not using punctuation all together will make the reader read really fast without knowing when to stop.

Third page: The teacher will read this page, stopping at every punctuation mark reading the sentence based upon what mark is present. This page demonstrates how if a student uses the incorrect punctuation mark, then the reader will read the wrong way.

To close the lesson, the teacher will talk with the students about how the use of punctuation affects the way that the reader reads a piece of writing that is produced.

Independent writing:

Students will go back to their desks and either work on their work that they have already started or create new sentences and use different punctuation marks to show how different ones can change how the reader reads. If students are working on their past work, the students will see if they are using appropriate punctuation marks based upon what they have written, or they can change the punctuation marks in order to assist how the reader is supposed to read what they have written. If the students want to practice using punctuation marks, the students can write the same sentence a few times, and put different punctuation marks at the end of each. The students will then read the sentences and see how they are different based on the different punctuation marks.

Sharing:

Students will share what they have been working on today with a neighbor, or their sharing partner. If they were writing new sentences, they will read these sentences to their partner and show how they are different based upon punctuation marks being different. If they are still working on past work, the students will show their partner how they are using correct punctuation marks.