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Lesson 3: Principles for the Teaching of Writing
Writer's Workshop
Writers don't just happen; they grow. Ralph Fletcher, a prominent advocate for positioning students as writers and teaching in the writing workshop format, writes beautifully about what writers need to grow.
Reflect back to the Fletcher, R. J. (1993) "What a Writer Needs" chapters from the previous lesson and spend a few minutes writing in your own writer's notebook on how you connect your own experiences to this reading, and/or how they disconnect.
Researchers and practitioners have come to consensus that a writing workshop format is a classroom organization for teaching writing that can support young writers in building motivation to write, writing stamina, generating writing, and revising and editing writing. Rather than have every child writing the same thing in the same way, writers are offered invitations to write, shown example texts (often called "mentor texts"), helped to identify pieces they would like to write, and supported through precisely-timed whole-class lessons (called "minilessons") as well as one-on-one instruction (called "conferring").
Here is a video by teacher-author, Ruth Ayers explaining in a very basic way what we mean when we say "Writing Workshop" as a classroom format. The truth is that no two teachers do this in the same way, but these components are pretty standard.
Watch the following video that highlights what writing workshop looks like at one elementary school.
Spend a few minutes writing in your notebook: How is the classroom in the video similar to writing classes you have experienced? How is it different from those?