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Peer Conferencing

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A Writer's Workshop Overview

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A Day in the Life of Our Writing Workshop

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Describes a day in our first grade writers workshop.

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Corden, R. (2007). Developing reading-writing connections: the impact of explicit instruction of literary devices on the quality of children’s narrative writing. Journal of Research in
Childhood Education, 21(3), 269 – 289.

Culham, R. (2014). The Writing Thief: Using Mentor Texts to Teach the Craft of Writing. Newark, DE: International Reading Association.

Graham, S, MacArthur, C.A. & Fitzgerlad, J. (2013). Best Practices in Writing Instruction. Guilford Publications.

Lancia, P. (1997). Literary borrowing: the effects of literature on children’s writing. The Reading Teacher, 50(6), 470 – 475.

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What I truly want is for students to love reading and writing and to see how reading benefits them as writers and how writing benefits them as readers. I want students to see themselves as competent writers regardless of their current ability. Students who have positive self-beliefs and see themselves as capable writers demonstrate more motivation and willingness to write (Graham, S., MacArthur, C.A. & Fitzgerald, J., 2013) Finally, I want the classroom to buzz with excitement as students collaborate with peers and take pride in their writing.

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This is perhaps the biggest change that I would like to make in my classroom. Creating a writer's workshop would ensure that students are writing regularly, have routines and procedures that facilitate writing and experience an environment that celebrates risks and accomplishment in writing.

Having a writer's workshop would facilitate many key understandings I now have about best practices in writing instruction. These include:

1. Creating a classroom community where students work collaboratively by sharing ideas, reading each other's writing, providing feedback and helping each other with revision of their written work. Students who discuss their own written text extend their knowledge and develop a greater sense of audience (Corden, 2007).
2. Providing time for students to meet consistently with the teacher for writing conferences. These conferences would provide specific feedback that is constructive, targeted and provides the best opportunity for students to grow regardless of their skill level. Culham (2014) called this nudging, in which the teacher tells students what they are doing well and then scaffolds instruction to move students onto the next step that will improve their writing.
3. Using mini-lessons to explicitly illustrate the link between reading and writing. To facilitate the relationship between reading and writing I will continue to use mentor texts but will now focus on the 6 plus 1 traits of writing to guide students in examining good writing and to set goals for their own writing development.
4. Providing meaning, relevant and authentic writing projects that students will see as challenging and worthy of their effort. Graham, S., MacArthur, C.A. & Fitzgerald, J. (2013), site unattractive writing tasks as a major contributor to a student's lack of motivation to write.
5. Having the time and enough resources within a writer's workshop to actually use technology as a place where students can communicate with each other and present their ideas.

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In addition to current practices, I would also add these strategies:

Providing student choice in the planning stage by allowing them to begin writing first, rather than mandating that they plan ahead. Thus students may use the discovery method of planning instead of advanced (Graham, S., MacArthur, C.A. & Fitzgerald, J., 2013)

Provide opportunities for English Language Learners to record their ideas orally and then with assistance have them listen and write their ideas as part of the pre-writing stage

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Students are provided choice in regards to what topic they would like to write about within a writing assignment.

Struggling writers are provided with specific supports such as scribing to record student's ideas in the pre-writing and planning stage

Students are provided with dictionaries or word webs for spelling support

Students can choose from two or three different graphic organizers when planning their writing

Expectations may be modified for specific students to reflect growth rather than meeting grade standards

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Learn More About PWIM

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Three years ago it was found that only 45% of students in my school were reading at or above grade level. Since then, the primary focus has been on reading instruction with virtually not attention being paid to writing.
There is great variety among teachers on staff in terms of programing, with some teachers using 6+1 Traits, the PWIM model or whatever methods of instruction they choose.

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Mentor Text

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Mentor Text

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Mentor Text

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Current Practices in Informational Writing - Content Area Reports using the Picture Word Inductive Model (PWIM)

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Current Practices in Informational Writing - Content Area Reports using the Picture Word Inductive Model (PWIM)

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My school district mandates that I use the PWIM model to teach vocabulary, letter sounds, word patterns and sentence and paragraph writing methods. The picture, selected by the teacher, provides a link between content in science or social studies to literacy.
Over the course of six weeks, students learn about the topic presented in the picture through read alouds, videos and activities. Then they write sentences using the words they have learned about. Finally, they compose an informational paragraph demonstrating what they have learned about .

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Outcome: CC3.4

Write to communicate ideas, information, and experiences pertaining to a topic by creating easy-to-follow writing (including a short report, a procedure, a letter, a story, a short script, and a poem) with a clear purpose, correct paragraph structure, and interesting detail.

Outcome: CR3.3

Listen to and understand information, identify main ideas and supporting details, compare different ideas and points of view, and explain connections made between texts heard.

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Current Practices in Narrative Writing - Fairytales

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Current Practices in Narrative Writing - Fairytales

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I begin this unit by reading several classic fairy tales with students. As we read together, we examine features of a fairytale such as good and evil characters, the problem and solution, how the story begins and ends and magical elements.
After several books are read and made available to the students in the classroom library, I move on to focusing on fractured fairytales. This gives us an opportunity to make text to text comparisons and examine different points of view.
After about three weeks of reading fairytales students have become well versed in determining what features are present in a fairytale and they are ready to create their own. Students are told that they can create an original fairytale or they may create a fractured fairytale.

This practice capitalizes on Lancia's (1997) findings, which show that "a saturation of literature directly influences writing by providing important models for successful work" (pp. 470).

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Journal Writing - Students write once a week about any topic of their choosing in their journal. These journals are meant to be a place for students to "just write" freely, although students who display a dislike of writing will write very little. I use the journals as evidence of what kind of writing students do spontaneously. This evidence guides me in making decisions regarding what areas of spelling, grammar or general writing skills I need to work on with students.

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EDU 743
April 16, 2016