Writer's Workshop Defined

Is anyone out there, still reading? I hope so... I'm looking for feedback or advice for the Writer's Workshop curriculum unit I'm helping write for our K-5 staff. It's part curriculum and part professional development as I really hope this unit will help establish a strong and common writer's workshop framework. Deb Stortz started the outline and I added all the specific details and links. I perused the bookmarks I have saved for years on the writer's workshop. I found lots of great resources and embedded them into this "Content" section of the online curriculum unit. So my questions as you read this are:

1. Is this useful for teachers who may never have had a successful writer's workshop in their classroom? 
2. Is this also useful for those of you who have implemented a writer's workshop framework in your classroom?
3. Is this appropriate or adaptable for primary teachers?
4. Is this appropriate or adaptable for intermediate teachers?
5. What is missing?
6. What is too much?

Here goes my draft...

Components of the Writer's Workshop & Related Resources

The writer's workshop must take place at least three times per week, preferably on a daily basis.

1. Mini Lessons:  5-15 minutes, A short, focused lesson at the beginning of the workshop. The teacher models strategies, skills or procedures for students to use in their writing. Lessons are chosen based on teacher observations of students' writing (student-teacher conferences), on assessments, and of course on the standards you need to teach.  Mini lessons may address procedures of the writer's workshop, such as how to use a writer's notebook, how to sign up for a teacher or a peer conference, how to confer with another student, etc. Mini lessons can be about writing skills, such as conventions, grammar, editing, etc. Or they can address the craft of writing such as developing good writing topics, the writing process, how to improve your word choice with descriptive words, what examples of strong voice look like, etc. Modeling may use mentor texts as examples of what good writers do. The teacher's own writing should be used during mini lessons. If your class is a community of writers, you are part of the community: let your students see you  as a writer too, who struggles with some of the same issues as they do!

Here are some mini lesson resources: (Please keep in mind that any hyperlinks to Google Docs require you to log into your Edina Google Apps account to view the files)

• Mentor texts: Here is a list of books organized by Trait of Writing as well as some literary elements: http://zzwriter.com/mentor-text-sets/ Please preview texts ahead of time as the titles listed are for primary students through young adults and these titles have not been formally approved by the Edina Public Schools.
  
  Another list compiled by children's book author Jennifer Jacobson lists more primary examples tied to the 6+1 Traits of Writing: http://jenniferjacobson.com/list-of-mentor-texts/. She offers this mentor text suggestion for teaching about voice in informational writing: "One book I frequently recommend is Ice Bear: In the Steps of a Polar Bear by Nicola Davies.  Davies writes, "No frost can steal a polar bear's heat," and then goes on to tell why with fascinating reasons/evidence.  It's a wonderful read aloud and it inspires students to write informational pieces with more voice." Jennifer Jacobson is also the author of No More, "I’m Done!" Fostering Independent Writers in the Primary Grades, which contains a wealth of mini lesson ideas.
  
  Finally, when thinking of mentor texts, don't forget digital mentor texts!  Whether it's an ebook, a website, or a video, think aloud wth students about the decisions the author made in terms of color, images/illustrations, transitions, text size, music, etc. If our students are going to produce quality digital texts, they need to look at digital mentor texts with the same attention as we devote to print mentor texts.

• Prewriting / Rehearsing: If your intermediate students are lacking ideas, check out this advice, from noted author Ralph Fletcher, on generating ideas for narrative writing: http://www.ralphfletcher.com/tips.html where he also explains the purpose and use of a writer's notebook. For primary teachers, here is an interest inventory and a Seed Topics recording sheet, adapted from the Writer's Workshop website of Mary Smith, second grade teacher in Red Creek, NY.
  

Mapping as a prewriting activity helps many students visualize their piece ahead of time. This post from the RAMS English blog  explains mapping and lists different types of writing that are enhanced by mappingin the prewriting stage. This would work well for intermediate students but could also be easily adapted for primary students, who often benefit from drawing and talking about their story with a peer before taking to the pencil or computer.

• Revising for more descriptive language:  At the primary level, use mentor texts to show students "juicy" words vs. "dusty" words. Students develop a taxonomy of juicy words as they read and listen to books (basically a double-sided page labeled A-Z ).  As they write, they refer to their taxonomy of juicy words to add more descriptive words. Starting in second grade, you could ask students to write their juicy words in different colors for nouns, verbs, and adjectives, for example. At the intermediate level, you could have a taxonomy for juicy words and one for strong verbs.  For a full description of how to introduce and use juicy words (including a list of mentor texts), see this lesson by Anne  Moening, second grade teacher in Hopkins and Teacher Consultant from the Minnesota Writing Project.

2. Status of class (check-in): 3-5 minutes. Students report in 1-2 sentences their plans for writing time to the teacher.  "What are you working on today?"  You may also have students sign in on some type of board indicating which stage of the writer's workshop they are working on that day. See this example shared by Mary Smith, a teacher in Red Creek, NY.

3. Independent Writing Time and Conferencing: Primary: 20 minutes minimum; intermediate: 30 minutes minimum. Most writer's workshop experts recommend 40-45 minutes. During this time, students do the work of writers or conference (either with the teacher or other student writers). This is the core of the writer's workshop and most of the workshop time is devoted to this activity.

• Procedures: Firmly established routines exist during this time. Through mini lessons, procedures are modeled, practiced, revised, and practiced again before students can be expected to work independently.
• What students are doing: Students do the work of writers: prewriting/rehearsing, drafting, revising, editing, conferencing, and publishing.
• What the teacher is doing: The teacher works with a small group or conferences with individual students on specific needs while the rest of the class is engaged in independent writing time. 
• Teacher-student conferencing: Teacher-student writing conferences, the cornerstone of the writer's workshop, are critical to improving students' writing. The purpose of these one-on-one conferences is for the teacher to inquire about the student's writing, provide feedback, teach or re-teach a strategy or skill, assess a student's writing, inform future teaching, and more importantly to encourage the writer.

Typical teacher questions might be:

• How's it going?
• Tell me about your writing.
• How may I help you?
• What are you working on?
• What do you have so far?
• What part are you stuck on?
• What part are you really happy with?  What part shows your best writing?

The expert on writing conferences, Carl Anderson, summarizes the process of conducting writing conferences (2010 NESA Spring Educators Conference handout). He is the author of several books and DVDs on conferencing with students, including the best seller How's It Going?

Ruth Ayres shares her lesson plan for introducing writing conferences to her students in September on the Two Writing Teachers blog, an excellent blog by two teachers who work with students in Kindergarten through 6th grade.

Wondering how to make time for conferring? If you use the Daily 5 framework, you can incorporate reading and writing conferences within that time. Also check out these suggestions from Mark Overmeyer, author of several books on the writer's workshop and a DVD on conferences.  Overmeyer also points out that not every student needs a conference "on schedule" and offers this pieces of advice for teachers of intermediate students: "One reason some conferences may take more time than needed is the student may not need a conference at that time. So, put it back in the hands of the student, and say: “If you want to meet with me, write me a quick note about how I can support you as a writer during a conference. Do you need help with ideas? Do you need help because you are stuck in the middle of a piece and you don’t know how to continue? If you let me know how I can help you, and precisely which part of your piece you need help with, we can both save some time.”"

• Peer conferencing: Peer conferencing needs to be extensively modeled before students can do it independently. During a peer conference, the writer tells what he or she needs from the peer (1-2 questions at the primary level; 2-3 questions at the intermediate level)  Peer conferences are only about content/information and organization.

One strategy to structure peer conferences is PATS: give one Praise, Ask a question, Tell something that stuck with you, make a Suggestion (in answer to the author's questions). At the primary level, teachers may want to simplify this into PA: Praise and Ask a question. To better understand PATS, watch this video developed by Michelle Shaw at Countryside to teach PATS to her students. The video includes a conference where Michelle is the writer and her student is the peer conferencing with her. This video would be appropriate to use with students in grades 3-5.

For additional resources on conferencing, check out these links:

Mark Overmeyer's Blog: A post with different questions to ask for each stage of the writing process that a student is working on.

Ruth Ayres' Two Writing Teachers blog: Advice on what to focus on during a writing conference. 

If you have an iPad / iPhone / iPod Touch, you may want to check out the CONFER app, which is designed to keep track of your conference results: strengths, teaching points, and next steps for each student. It also allows you to group students by those results, etc. Check out this video explaining the features of CONFER. The "lite" version is free to try and the full version costs $14.99.

4. Sharing: Generally 5-10 minutes. Everything students write does not have to be polished to a final draft. Yet, at the end of the writer's workshop the student has an opportunity  to share and communicate about his/her writing. Depending on the purpose, students may share either works in progress, or finished work (publishing). It may be a paragraph that finally clicked, a favorite descriptive sentence, or the whole piece. If the student is not ready to share any writing, s/he can share what s/he is working on. Other formats may include peer conference discoveries (a brief summary of each student’s skills on display during the conference), or student as teacher share. Listeners should provide positive comments and constructive feedback to the writer. Sharing is an important step of the writer's workshop in empowering students as writers and in building the writing community in your classroom.

So, what do you think?