# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Schools often teach writing in the Writing Workshop, an approach originally developed by Lucy Calkins. In Victoria, this approach is sometimes known as Writer's Workshop.

Regular and predictable timetabling of the writing workshop is recommended so that students can anticipate, prepare and plan for their writing (Calkins, 1994).

While the processes of writing are an integral component of any effective teaching approach to writing, the principles underpinning writing workshop draw heavily on the work of Donald Graves, motivated by an emphasis on 'writing as a process', and where individual interest and choice are fundamental to students becoming independent writers.

The writing workshop is designed to offer a simple and predictable learning environment. Ideally it should occur daily for 50 to 60 minutes.

Mini-le​ssons
:

Mini-lessons are short and focussed of approximately 10 minutes. The teacher seeks to inspire and instruct the students as writers. A mini-lesson might focus on something the students are struggling with, and introduce strategies that the students can employ in their own writing.

During the mini-lesson the teacher connects the day's teaching to the ongoing work that the students have been doing and they explain the Learning Intention and Success Criteria.

The teacher then explicitly teaches, after which the students have the opportunity to briefly engage/apply what they have just learnt.​

Substantive talk is an important part of this point in the mini lesson. The teacher ends the mini-lesson by asking the students to apply what they have learnt in the mini-lesson to their on-going work

Work time (writing and conferring):

Students work independently on their written pieces. Different structures and supports are in place to ensure students get support from their teacher or peers.

Roving student-teacher conferences:

The teacher moves around the room enabling students to showcase successes in their writing and receive assistance on areas that trouble or challenge them.

Calkins (2011) advises teachers that conference outcomes should lead to tangible strategies students can employ in future writing. Often, checking the students take up of the new learning will characterise the conclusion of a student-teacher conference ("So from now on, whenever you write, will you remember to ...").

Guided or group student-teacher conferences:

The teacher might gather small groups of 4-6 students who have a similar need and provide additional instruction and support.

Peer conferring, response groups, sharing sessions:

Here, the focus is on the classroom being a community of writers. As part of the writing workshop, students need the opportunity to:

share drafts

comment on each other's strengths

advise on areas that could be clearer or more powerfully conveyed

offer strategies for overcoming difficulties.

Peer conferring for EAL/D students

Peer conferring can be broken down into writer-led or reader-led conferring for EAL/D students. In either case, students may use their home language to confer with same language peers. The teacher explicitly scaffolds:

the processes for reading one another's drafts

how to compose and communicate feedback.

An example of reader-led conferring:

Students exchange drafts

Both readers have a checklist or questions beside the draft (see below)

Both students note down comments and feedback while reading their friend's draft

In turns, both students look at the drafts and feedback sheets together

Each reader explains their comments to the writer

Example checklist items for a narrative:

Orientation, including when, where, who, what

Detailed physical description of the main character

Detailed description of the setting, using at least four senses

Every sentence starts with a capital letter

Every sentence ends with a full stop

Words are underlined for spelling checks

An example of writer-led conferring:

Writer and reader both look at a single text together

Writer reads the draft aloud

After reading, the writer asks the partner specific questions and makes editing marks or notes down important feedback. These are example questions for a book review draft:

Have I included the title and author's name in my review?

Have I explained two interesting ideas from the book?

Have I included two extended descriptive phrases?

Is my meaning clear?

What is the best thing about my draft?

Can you suggest any improvements?

Share Time:

At the end of the workshop, the teacher ensures there is time to capture the work of the day, reminding the students of what they have learnt as writers.

In some classrooms, an author's chair is the location which allows for affirming and constructive feedback and advice to be direct to all students in turn.

Publication celebrations:

These occur throughout the year-often at the end of a teaching and learning cycle. They may replace the regular daily workshop as outlined above.

Opportunities need to be made to recognise students' writing achievements as they:

publish final pieces of writing

complete a text in a new genre (a report, an argument, a poem), or

receive a response to something they have produced for an audience.

On some of these occasions, the wider classroom community (family members, caregivers, grandparents, etc.) can participate in the celebration.

This both values the students' achievements, as well as legitimises writing as a meaningful and important activity.

While student choice and ownership of their own writing is often foregrounded in the Writing Workshop (and certainly responsibility lies with the students as they plan, draft, revise and publish) the teacher's role is fundamental to the success of this approach in the classroom.
The teacher needs to scaffold and model the entire writing process, so engaging in acts of writing by the teacher helps facilitate this:

If the students keep a Writer's Notebook, so should the teacher.

If the students take the author's chair to showcase their writing and seek responses, so should the teacher.

Specifically, teachers need to think about the focussed, explicit teaching they can offer to the whole class, to small groups and to individuals.

Some of these instructional approaches (modelled writing, shared writing, interactive writing) are focussed on elsewhere in this toolkit and these can be deployed strategically to support students as they move through the process from planning to publication.

Calkins and Ehrenworth (2016) outline key principles which inform the Writing Workshop approach:

Protected time to write

​

Children must be given 'the luxury of time' (p. 186) to become deeply invested in their writing, and draft, revise and publish their written pieces at a pace that honours and recognises the creative process.

The ideal writing workshop includes ten minutes of explicit instruction, at least half an hour of writing time (conferences and small group instruction), ending with 5-10 minutes of sharing and goal setting with a peer (Calkins & Ehrenworth, 2016).

Cho​ice

​

Opening choice over both topic, genre and strategies used for writing provide opportunities for engagement and investment in skill development.

Resp​onse in the form of feedback

​

Feedback is provided as students are engaged in the process of writing emphasising 'the critical role of process in writing, collaboration, personal responsibility, authentic writing tasks, and a supportive learning environment' (Graham & Sandmel, 2011 as cited in Calkins & Ehrenworth, 2016, p. 9).

I think ... I feel... I wonder... chart

mind maps

PMI chart (plus, minus, interesting)

Y chart (looks, feels, sounds like..)

three by three-list three-word phrases for three minutes

capture what is important-try to capture feelings and emotions

drawings and sketches

collections of artefacts in a 'seed box'.

Explicit instruction

​

In the writing workshop, explicit instruction is provided through mini-lessons, conferences and small group work.

Here, a whole class focus on a shared genre 'employing strategies and emulating mentor texts of that genre' provides a context for explicit teaching about the 'craft and structure' of the genre which can be used by students in their writing (Calkins & Ehrenworth, 2016, p. 10).

Working towards clear goals

​

Mentor texts or model texts are used to establish clear writing goals and to help develop independent writers as they learn to 'transfer and apply what they learn from one writing opportunity to another' (Calkins & Ehrenworth, 2016, p. 10).

An important component of the Writing Workshop approach is the Writer's Notebook which 'creates a place for students (and writers) to save their words-in the form of a memory, a reflection, a list, a rambling of thoughts, a sketch, or even a scrap of print taped on the page' (Buckner, 2005, p.4).

memories

observations of the things happening around them

descriptions of people and places important in their lives

opinions

wonderings

wishes

family stories, hobbies and other passions.

The notebook serves as a means to encourage young writers to value writing, where 'seeds' for a longer writing project require revisiting and rereading to locate 'a phrase, a paragraph, a page' which might be expanded and developed (Calkins, 1994, pp. 38-39).
Ideas for developing a seed include:

The generation of ideas is only the beginning. It is the teacher's role to support the extension and elaboration of the 'seeds' which might become a more detailed plan, a draft or a published text.

While not all ideas will be seen through to a 'final' copy, it is the role of the teacher to monitor students' writing to ensure experiences which progress their writing through the various processes of writing, and across a range of text types, are provided each term and across the school year.

1. A writer's notebook is a tool students use to record the things they notice, observe, and think about. Each recording is called an 'entry'. The entries can be any of a variety of ideas. The most common are:

Children write best about the things that are important to them and what they are interested in. It is writing that comes from what they know and what they have experienced.

2. A writer's notebook houses ideas that writers can return to in order to grow ideas, restructure, rethink, revise, connect ideas and ultimately choose from a variety of entries to publish for an audience. It supports the work of publishing.

3. Notebook writing encourages a writer to take to the 'long view'. What might start off as a small undeveloped idea has the potential to be developed into something fully formed.

4. Students need daily sustained periods of time to write. The writer's notebook helps give direction to those sustained times for writing, especially early in the year when establishing a classroom community that will support students' writing throughout the year.

5. Assessing how the students are using the notebook might include:

reading the recent entries in your students' notebooks

asking students to put post-it notes on the entries they would like you to read- give some criteria to the students for example, chose an entry you love, an entry where you tried something new, an entry that shows your best writing

conferring with students and asking them to talk about the entries they have included over the last week.

Supporting EAL/D learners

Using a variety of languages and multimodal examples will support EAL/D students to develop rich ideas in their writer's notebooks. Some options are:

illustrations or photos

artefacts, e.g. movie ticket, zoo map

storyboard or comic strip formats, whether on paper or digital

charts or text written in home language

a diagram or text written in English, with home language vocabulary and notes where helpful

audio recordings of the student telling a story or explaining details

transcriptions or notes written by a same-language peer following oral storytelling or discussion

audio recordings or notes from storytelling or discussion with a family member.

Buckner, A. (2005). Notebook know-how: Strategies for the Writer's Notebook. Portland, ME: Stenhouse.

Calkins, L.M. (1994). The art of teaching writing. (2nd ed.). Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.

Calkins, L.M. (2011). A curricular plan for the writing workshop: Grade K. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.

Calkins, L. & Ehrenworth, M. (2016). Growing extraordinary writers: Leadership decisions to raise the level of writing across a school and a District. The Reading Teacher, 70(1), 7 -18.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Schools often teach writing in the Writing Workshop, an approach originally developed by Lucy Calkins. In Victoria, this approach is sometimes known as Writer's Workshop. Regular and predictable timetabling of the writing workshop is recommended so that students can anticipate, prepare and plan for their writing (Calkins, 1994).

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Schools often teach writing in the Writing Workshop, an approach originally developed by Lucy Calkins. In Victoria, this approach is sometimes known as Writer's Workshop.

Regular and predictable timetabling of the writing workshop is recommended so that students can anticipate, prepare and plan for their writing (Calkins, 1994).

While the processes of writing are an integral component of any effective teaching approach to writing, the principles underpinning writing workshop draw heavily on the work of Donald Graves, motivated by an emphasis on 'writing as a process', and where individual interest and choice are fundamental to students becoming independent writers.

The writing workshop is designed to offer a simple and predictable learning environment. Ideally it should occur daily for 50 to 60 minutes.

Mini-le​ssons
:

Mini-lessons are short and focussed of approximately 10 minutes. The teacher seeks to inspire and instruct the students as writers. A mini-lesson might focus on something the students are struggling with, and introduce strategies that the students can employ in their own writing.

During the mini-lesson the teacher connects the day's teaching to the ongoing work that the students have been doing and they explain the Learning Intention and Success Criteria.

The teacher then explicitly teaches, after which the students have the opportunity to briefly engage/apply what they have just learnt.​

Substantive talk is an important part of this point in the mini lesson. The teacher ends the mini-lesson by asking the students to apply what they have learnt in the mini-lesson to their on-going work

Work time (writing and conferring):

Students work independently on their written pieces. Different structures and supports are in place to ensure students get support from their teacher or peers.

Roving student-teacher conferences:

The teacher moves around the room enabling students to showcase successes in their writing and receive assistance on areas that trouble or challenge them.

Calkins (2011) advises teachers that conference outcomes should lead to tangible strategies students can employ in future writing. Often, checking the students take up of the new learning will characterise the conclusion of a student-teacher conference ("So from now on, whenever you write, will you remember to ...").

Guided or group student-teacher conferences:

The teacher might gather small groups of 4-6 students who have a similar need and provide additional instruction and support.

Peer conferring, response groups, sharing sessions:

Here, the focus is on the classroom being a community of writers. As part of the writing workshop, students need the opportunity to:

share drafts

comment on each other's strengths

advise on areas that could be clearer or more powerfully conveyed

offer strategies for overcoming difficulties.

Peer conferring for EAL/D students

Peer conferring can be broken down into writer-led or reader-led conferring for EAL/D students. In either case, students may use their home language to confer with same language peers. The teacher explicitly scaffolds:

the processes for reading one another's drafts

how to compose and communicate feedback.

An example of reader-led conferring:

Students exchange drafts

Both readers have a checklist or questions beside the draft (see below)

Both students note down comments and feedback while reading their friend's draft

In turns, both students look at the drafts and feedback sheets together

Each reader explains their comments to the writer

Example checklist items for a narrative:

Orientation, including when, where, who, what

Detailed physical description of the main character

Detailed description of the setting, using at least four senses

Every sentence starts with a capital letter

Every sentence ends with a full stop

Words are underlined for spelling checks

An example of writer-led conferring:

Writer and reader both look at a single text together

Writer reads the draft aloud

After reading, the writer asks the partner specific questions and makes editing marks or notes down important feedback. These are example questions for a book review draft:

Have I included the title and author's name in my review?

Have I explained two interesting ideas from the book?

Have I included two extended descriptive phrases?

Is my meaning clear?

What is the best thing about my draft?

Can you suggest any improvements?

Share Time:

At the end of the workshop, the teacher ensures there is time to capture the work of the day, reminding the students of what they have learnt as writers.

In some classrooms, an author's chair is the location which allows for affirming and constructive feedback and advice to be direct to all students in turn.

Publication celebrations:

These occur throughout the year-often at the end of a teaching and learning cycle. They may replace the regular daily workshop as outlined above.

Opportunities need to be made to recognise students' writing achievements as they:

publish final pieces of writing

complete a text in a new genre (a report, an argument, a poem), or

receive a response to something they have produced for an audience.

On some of these occasions, the wider classroom community (family members, caregivers, grandparents, etc.) can participate in the celebration.

This both values the students' achievements, as well as legitimises writing as a meaningful and important activity.

While student choice and ownership of their own writing is often foregrounded in the Writing Workshop (and certainly responsibility lies with the students as they plan, draft, revise and publish) the teacher's role is fundamental to the success of this approach in the classroom.
The teacher needs to scaffold and model the entire writing process, so engaging in acts of writing by the teacher helps facilitate this:

If the students keep a Writer's Notebook, so should the teacher.

If the students take the author's chair to showcase their writing and seek responses, so should the teacher.

Specifically, teachers need to think about the focussed, explicit teaching they can offer to the whole class, to small groups and to individuals.

Some of these instructional approaches (modelled writing, shared writing, interactive writing) are focussed on elsewhere in this toolkit and these can be deployed strategically to support students as they move through the process from planning to publication.

Calkins and Ehrenworth (2016) outline key principles which inform the Writing Workshop approach:

Protected time to write

​

Children must be given 'the luxury of time' (p. 186) to become deeply invested in their writing, and draft, revise and publish their written pieces at a pace that honours and recognises the creative process.

The ideal writing workshop includes ten minutes of explicit instruction, at least half an hour of writing time (conferences and small group instruction), ending with 5-10 minutes of sharing and goal setting with a peer (Calkins & Ehrenworth, 2016).

Cho​ice

​

Opening choice over both topic, genre and strategies used for writing provide opportunities for engagement and investment in skill development.

Resp​onse in the form of feedback

​

Feedback is provided as students are engaged in the process of writing emphasising 'the critical role of process in writing, collaboration, personal responsibility, authentic writing tasks, and a supportive learning environment' (Graham & Sandmel, 2011 as cited in Calkins & Ehrenworth, 2016, p. 9).

I think ... I feel... I wonder... chart

mind maps

PMI chart (plus, minus, interesting)

Y chart (looks, feels, sounds like..)

three by three-list three-word phrases for three minutes

capture what is important-try to capture feelings and emotions

drawings and sketches

collections of artefacts in a 'seed box'.

Explicit instruction

​

In the writing workshop, explicit instruction is provided through mini-lessons, conferences and small group work.

Here, a whole class focus on a shared genre 'employing strategies and emulating mentor texts of that genre' provides a context for explicit teaching about the 'craft and structure' of the genre which can be used by students in their writing (Calkins & Ehrenworth, 2016, p. 10).

Working towards clear goals

​

Mentor texts or model texts are used to establish clear writing goals and to help develop independent writers as they learn to 'transfer and apply what they learn from one writing opportunity to another' (Calkins & Ehrenworth, 2016, p. 10).

An important component of the Writing Workshop approach is the Writer's Notebook which 'creates a place for students (and writers) to save their words-in the form of a memory, a reflection, a list, a rambling of thoughts, a sketch, or even a scrap of print taped on the page' (Buckner, 2005, p.4).

memories

observations of the things happening around them

descriptions of people and places important in their lives

opinions

wonderings

wishes

family stories, hobbies and other passions.

The notebook serves as a means to encourage young writers to value writing, where 'seeds' for a longer writing project require revisiting and rereading to locate 'a phrase, a paragraph, a page' which might be expanded and developed (Calkins, 1994, pp. 38-39).
Ideas for developing a seed include:

The generation of ideas is only the beginning. It is the teacher's role to support the extension and elaboration of the 'seeds' which might become a more detailed plan, a draft or a published text.

While not all ideas will be seen through to a 'final' copy, it is the role of the teacher to monitor students' writing to ensure experiences which progress their writing through the various processes of writing, and across a range of text types, are provided each term and across the school year.

1. A writer's notebook is a tool students use to record the things they notice, observe, and think about. Each recording is called an 'entry'. The entries can be any of a variety of ideas. The most common are:

Children write best about the things that are important to them and what they are interested in. It is writing that comes from what they know and what they have experienced.

2. A writer's notebook houses ideas that writers can return to in order to grow ideas, restructure, rethink, revise, connect ideas and ultimately choose from a variety of entries to publish for an audience. It supports the work of publishing.

3. Notebook writing encourages a writer to take to the 'long view'. What might start off as a small undeveloped idea has the potential to be developed into something fully formed.

4. Students need daily sustained periods of time to write. The writer's notebook helps give direction to those sustained times for writing, especially early in the year when establishing a classroom community that will support students' writing throughout the year.

5. Assessing how the students are using the notebook might include:

reading the recent entries in your students' notebooks

asking students to put post-it notes on the entries they would like you to read- give some criteria to the students for example, chose an entry you love, an entry where you tried something new, an entry that shows your best writing

conferring with students and asking them to talk about the entries they have included over the last week.

Supporting EAL/D learners

Using a variety of languages and multimodal examples will support EAL/D students to develop rich ideas in their writer's notebooks. Some options are:

illustrations or photos

artefacts, e.g. movie ticket, zoo map

storyboard or comic strip formats, whether on paper or digital

charts or text written in home language

a diagram or text written in English, with home language vocabulary and notes where helpful

audio recordings of the student telling a story or explaining details

transcriptions or notes written by a same-language peer following oral storytelling or discussion

audio recordings or notes from storytelling or discussion with a family member.

Buckner, A. (2005). Notebook know-how: Strategies for the Writer's Notebook. Portland, ME: Stenhouse.

Calkins, L.M. (1994). The art of teaching writing. (2nd ed.). Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.

Calkins, L.M. (2011). A curricular plan for the writing workshop: Grade K. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.

Calkins, L. & Ehrenworth, M. (2016). Growing extraordinary writers: Leadership decisions to raise the level of writing across a school and a District. The Reading Teacher, 70(1), 7 -18.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Schools often teach writing in the Writing Workshop, an approach originally developed by Lucy Calkins. In Victoria, this approach is sometimes known as Writer's Workshop. Regular and predictable timetabling of the writing workshop is recommended so that students can anticipate, prepare and plan for their writing (Calkins, 1994).

# data[].attributes.body
"Make stuff" About the Authors
Writers workshop is daily writing instruction where the teacher provides examples of writing and then children independently create their own writing. It includes mini lessons, conferencing,

# data[].attributes.headline
Why writers workshop should be included in early education?

# data[].attributes.subject
Why writers workshop should be included in early education?

# data[].attributes.body
All K-2 standards focus on students writing opinion pieces, informative text, and narratives.
Schools often teach to the standard or to a test. Students are taught specific types of writing.
Students don't have the freedom to explore and can easily loose interest.
Writers workshop helps build writers confidence.
Build on students current skills/level.

# data[].attributes.body
Writing is essential- Writing is an essential job skill.
Writing and reading- The more children read the better they write and the more they write the better they read.

# data[].attributes.body
-Respect a student who opts not to share
-Model supportive responses
-Have a space in the classroom students feel comfortable using as they chose too
-Engage students with multiple materials

# data[].attributes.body
What you can do at home..
Read like writers! Point out and focus on the text you're reading.

Read a variety of materials. Different kind of books, poems, and articles.

# data[].attributes.body
Link-> Directions:

# data[].attributes.body
Link-> Why mind maps and how?

# data[].attributes.body
-Should reflect the varied voices and interests of the class
-stores their ideas
-freedom of what they put in their individual notebooks. This could include memories, observations and wonderings.
-model different ways of putting down ideas. ex: pictures, list, mind maps and free writing.

# data[].attributes.body
"Why is Writing Important?"

"The Importance of Establishing Routines"

"Helping Young Children Develop Strong Writing Skills"

"Writing Directly Benefits Students Reading Skills"

The Writing Workshop

Benefits of Bookmaking Activities

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Schools often teach writing in the Writing Workshop, an approach originally developed by Lucy Calkins. In Victoria, this approach is sometimes known as Writer's Workshop.

Regular and predictable timetabling of the writing workshop is recommended so that students can anticipate, prepare and plan for their writing (Calkins, 1994).

While the processes of writing are an integral component of any effective teaching approach to writing, the principles underpinning writing workshop draw heavily on the work of Donald Graves, motivated by an emphasis on 'writing as a process', and where individual interest and choice are fundamental to students becoming independent writers.

The writing workshop is designed to offer a simple and predictable learning environment. Ideally it should occur daily for 50 to 60 minutes.

Mini-le​ssons
:

Mini-lessons are short and focussed of approximately 10 minutes. The teacher seeks to inspire and instruct the students as writers. A mini-lesson might focus on something the students are struggling with, and introduce strategies that the students can employ in their own writing.

During the mini-lesson the teacher connects the day's teaching to the ongoing work that the students have been doing and they explain the Learning Intention and Success Criteria.

The teacher then explicitly teaches, after which the students have the opportunity to briefly engage/apply what they have just learnt.​

Substantive talk is an important part of this point in the mini lesson. The teacher ends the mini-lesson by asking the students to apply what they have learnt in the mini-lesson to their on-going work

Work time (writing and conferring):

Students work independently on their written pieces. Different structures and supports are in place to ensure students get support from their teacher or peers.

Roving student-teacher conferences:

The teacher moves around the room enabling students to showcase successes in their writing and receive assistance on areas that trouble or challenge them.

Calkins (2011) advises teachers that conference outcomes should lead to tangible strategies students can employ in future writing. Often, checking the students take up of the new learning will characterise the conclusion of a student-teacher conference ("So from now on, whenever you write, will you remember to ...").

Guided or group student-teacher conferences:

The teacher might gather small groups of 4-6 students who have a similar need and provide additional instruction and support.

Peer conferring, response groups, sharing sessions:

Here, the focus is on the classroom being a community of writers. As part of the writing workshop, students need the opportunity to:

share drafts

comment on each other's strengths

advise on areas that could be clearer or more powerfully conveyed

offer strategies for overcoming difficulties.

Peer conferring for EAL/D students

Peer conferring can be broken down into writer-led or reader-led conferring for EAL/D students. In either case, students may use their home language to confer with same language peers. The teacher explicitly scaffolds:

the processes for reading one another's drafts

how to compose and communicate feedback.

An example of reader-led conferring:

Students exchange drafts

Both readers have a checklist or questions beside the draft (see below)

Both students note down comments and feedback while reading their friend's draft

In turns, both students look at the drafts and feedback sheets together

Each reader explains their comments to the writer

Example checklist items for a narrative:

Orientation, including when, where, who, what

Detailed physical description of the main character

Detailed description of the setting, using at least four senses

Every sentence starts with a capital letter

Every sentence ends with a full stop

Words are underlined for spelling checks

An example of writer-led conferring:

Writer and reader both look at a single text together

Writer reads the draft aloud

After reading, the writer asks the partner specific questions and makes editing marks or notes down important feedback. These are example questions for a book review draft:

Have I included the title and author's name in my review?

Have I explained two interesting ideas from the book?

Have I included two extended descriptive phrases?

Is my meaning clear?

What is the best thing about my draft?

Can you suggest any improvements?

Share Time:

At the end of the workshop, the teacher ensures there is time to capture the work of the day, reminding the students of what they have learnt as writers.

In some classrooms, an author's chair is the location which allows for affirming and constructive feedback and advice to be direct to all students in turn.

Publication celebrations:

These occur throughout the year-often at the end of a teaching and learning cycle. They may replace the regular daily workshop as outlined above.

Opportunities need to be made to recognise students' writing achievements as they:

publish final pieces of writing

complete a text in a new genre (a report, an argument, a poem), or

receive a response to something they have produced for an audience.

On some of these occasions, the wider classroom community (family members, caregivers, grandparents, etc.) can participate in the celebration.

This both values the students' achievements, as well as legitimises writing as a meaningful and important activity.

While student choice and ownership of their own writing is often foregrounded in the Writing Workshop (and certainly responsibility lies with the students as they plan, draft, revise and publish) the teacher's role is fundamental to the success of this approach in the classroom.
The teacher needs to scaffold and model the entire writing process, so engaging in acts of writing by the teacher helps facilitate this:

If the students keep a Writer's Notebook, so should the teacher.

If the students take the author's chair to showcase their writing and seek responses, so should the teacher.

Specifically, teachers need to think about the focussed, explicit teaching they can offer to the whole class, to small groups and to individuals.

Some of these instructional approaches (modelled writing, shared writing, interactive writing) are focussed on elsewhere in this toolkit and these can be deployed strategically to support students as they move through the process from planning to publication.

Calkins and Ehrenworth (2016) outline key principles which inform the Writing Workshop approach:

Protected time to write

​

Children must be given 'the luxury of time' (p. 186) to become deeply invested in their writing, and draft, revise and publish their written pieces at a pace that honours and recognises the creative process.

The ideal writing workshop includes ten minutes of explicit instruction, at least half an hour of writing time (conferences and small group instruction), ending with 5-10 minutes of sharing and goal setting with a peer (Calkins & Ehrenworth, 2016).

Cho​ice

​

Opening choice over both topic, genre and strategies used for writing provide opportunities for engagement and investment in skill development.

Resp​onse in the form of feedback

​

Feedback is provided as students are engaged in the process of writing emphasising 'the critical role of process in writing, collaboration, personal responsibility, authentic writing tasks, and a supportive learning environment' (Graham & Sandmel, 2011 as cited in Calkins & Ehrenworth, 2016, p. 9).

I think ... I feel... I wonder... chart

mind maps

PMI chart (plus, minus, interesting)

Y chart (looks, feels, sounds like..)

three by three-list three-word phrases for three minutes

capture what is important-try to capture feelings and emotions

drawings and sketches

collections of artefacts in a 'seed box'.

Explicit instruction

​

In the writing workshop, explicit instruction is provided through mini-lessons, conferences and small group work.

Here, a whole class focus on a shared genre 'employing strategies and emulating mentor texts of that genre' provides a context for explicit teaching about the 'craft and structure' of the genre which can be used by students in their writing (Calkins & Ehrenworth, 2016, p. 10).

Working towards clear goals

​

Mentor texts or model texts are used to establish clear writing goals and to help develop independent writers as they learn to 'transfer and apply what they learn from one writing opportunity to another' (Calkins & Ehrenworth, 2016, p. 10).

An important component of the Writing Workshop approach is the Writer's Notebook which 'creates a place for students (and writers) to save their words-in the form of a memory, a reflection, a list, a rambling of thoughts, a sketch, or even a scrap of print taped on the page' (Buckner, 2005, p.4).

memories

observations of the things happening around them

descriptions of people and places important in their lives

opinions

wonderings

wishes

family stories, hobbies and other passions.

The notebook serves as a means to encourage young writers to value writing, where 'seeds' for a longer writing project require revisiting and rereading to locate 'a phrase, a paragraph, a page' which might be expanded and developed (Calkins, 1994, pp. 38-39).
Ideas for developing a seed include:

The generation of ideas is only the beginning. It is the teacher's role to support the extension and elaboration of the 'seeds' which might become a more detailed plan, a draft or a published text.

While not all ideas will be seen through to a 'final' copy, it is the role of the teacher to monitor students' writing to ensure experiences which progress their writing through the various processes of writing, and across a range of text types, are provided each term and across the school year.

1. A writer's notebook is a tool students use to record the things they notice, observe, and think about. Each recording is called an 'entry'. The entries can be any of a variety of ideas. The most common are:

Children write best about the things that are important to them and what they are interested in. It is writing that comes from what they know and what they have experienced.

2. A writer's notebook houses ideas that writers can return to in order to grow ideas, restructure, rethink, revise, connect ideas and ultimately choose from a variety of entries to publish for an audience. It supports the work of publishing.

3. Notebook writing encourages a writer to take to the 'long view'. What might start off as a small undeveloped idea has the potential to be developed into something fully formed.

4. Students need daily sustained periods of time to write. The writer's notebook helps give direction to those sustained times for writing, especially early in the year when establishing a classroom community that will support students' writing throughout the year.

5. Assessing how the students are using the notebook might include:

reading the recent entries in your students' notebooks

asking students to put post-it notes on the entries they would like you to read- give some criteria to the students for example, chose an entry you love, an entry where you tried something new, an entry that shows your best writing

conferring with students and asking them to talk about the entries they have included over the last week.

Supporting EAL/D learners

Using a variety of languages and multimodal examples will support EAL/D students to develop rich ideas in their writer's notebooks. Some options are:

illustrations or photos

artefacts, e.g. movie ticket, zoo map

storyboard or comic strip formats, whether on paper or digital

charts or text written in home language

a diagram or text written in English, with home language vocabulary and notes where helpful

audio recordings of the student telling a story or explaining details

transcriptions or notes written by a same-language peer following oral storytelling or discussion

audio recordings or notes from storytelling or discussion with a family member.

Buckner, A. (2005). Notebook know-how: Strategies for the Writer's Notebook. Portland, ME: Stenhouse.

Calkins, L.M. (1994). The art of teaching writing. (2nd ed.). Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.

Calkins, L.M. (2011). A curricular plan for the writing workshop: Grade K. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.

Calkins, L. & Ehrenworth, M. (2016). Growing extraordinary writers: Leadership decisions to raise the level of writing across a school and a District. The Reading Teacher, 70(1), 7 -18.

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Schools often teach writing in the Writing Workshop, an approach originally developed by Lucy Calkins. In Victoria, this approach is sometimes known as Writer's Workshop. Regular and predictable timetabling of the writing workshop is recommended so that students can anticipate, prepare and plan for their writing (Calkins, 1994).

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-Allow students to select their own topics
Choice Promotes:
-Authenticity, student work is original and unique
-Engagement, students work best when writing about topics of interest to them
-Voice, each student offers a new perspective
-Authority, students write with passion when they write what they know
"Choice"

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Mini-lesson:
-4-8 minutes of recorded mini-lesson which student views individually or in pairs
-Students can re-watch the mini lesson
Writing/Conferring Time:
-Student shares their goals
-Differentiated video with mentor texts
-Teacher and student evaluate application of mini-lesson in writing
-Teacher should make specific compliment(s) to students work and then tell student something they could add to their writing
Sharing:
-Students can share portions of their work online
-Feedback between students in written and can be edited
-Responding to others is required
"Digital Writer's Workshop"

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-Write along with your students
-Read different types of books. -Focus on writing strategies.
-whole group mini lessons. instruct students on new strategy. Do it together then encourage them to try it in their own writing.
-individual conferences. Positive and suggestions for growth
-Help students make deep connections between what they read and what they write
-Set clear expectations
-make writing workshop part of your schedule. ROUTINE is important!
-Normalize imperfection for you AND your students.