Writing workshop with Our Youngest Writers

 A child who is gaining control over the conventions of written language and who is using language to craft literature

      From the first day students should think of writing workshop as a time when they get to make stuff Making stuff drives all of our teaching with our youngest writers Make books Supplies are everything they represent worlds of possibilities for students Create a context that feels familiar to them Being able to choose activities from a range of options is very important for young children

     When only have a Journal page or a space for a illustration and a few lines students tend to write a small amount Making Books With Multiple pages, students have seen books so they know their should be something on every page Encourages volume Illustrations help them make important meanings Students work is so important to them, listen to them explain it

    Students thinking of themselves as authors of books is the starting point to learn like writers Think more about just the text, start to think of the meaning When students see new types of writing and notice things they will try to incorporate into own writing Eventually learn they need to read the kind of think they are trying to write

  Free writing is the only kind of writing there is in young writers All about creating a space in the day when children are very free to experiment, explore, and approximate with writing.

       Countless pieces of writing in many different forms and genres Represent ideas with illustrations Generated spelling for hundreds of words Use ordinary words over and over Made decisions about punctuation Figured out how to begin and end pieces Used writing in other subjects and to help them learn to do things outside of writing workshop

   Build up enthusiasm for the writing workshop that they will be doing everyday Need a general understanding of what they will be doing and what workshop time is for Show examples of work from students in the past

  How everything will work in the room during workshop time Perform a walk through with students

     Get tools ready Find the best place for you to work You may talk- asking a friend for help, sharing idea… Write until time runs out Be ready to listen

   Students need to know what it means to be finished with a piece of writing Children should be able to finish and move on to something new without a teacher’s intervention Many options for where finished work goes

  ◦ ◦ ◦ ◦ ◦ ◦ Learning about how our language works should happen all day Need to supply a rich variety of activities and engagements * reading aloud * talking into our routines * word study * center work * songs and games * writing to support other work

  ◦ ◦ ◦ ◦ ◦ ◦ Everything in the classroom should be a learning opportunity and create a surrounding of print resources Use to reference * Alphabet charts * number charts * color charts * calendars * word walls * etc.

 Every time we read aloud to children we are teaching writing

   We need to believe that students come to school already on their way learning to write Get students started writing away and see what they can do Keep them writing so that they learn more about writing and will hopefully be able to use writing successfully in their lives someday

    Minilessons help create that “somebody could try this” energy around children's writing. Children make connections from seeing something in a book to imagining it as a specific possibility for someone in the room. Make children feel like they are writing books, staple some pages together so they feel like they are making books. When they feel like they make books they look at books like they can do the same.

   The purpose of the minilesson is not to establish some writing for the children to do during writing workshop each day. Instead the purpose is to fill the room with ideas for how they might do that bookmaking better and better. Each minilesson should end with the students envisioning a new possibility for their work.

 Topics for minilessons can be the same in grades 1-12 but what they write about and how they write will be different.

 ◦ ◦ ◦ ◦ The goal of a minilesson is that students develop: A sense of self as a writer Ways of readying the world as writers Ways of reading text like writers And a sense of audience

   ◦ What are these books about?

This questions help us get at the topic potential in this genre ◦ How do we think the authors get the ideas for these books?

This question helps us think about how we might choose a topic for this genre. ◦ What do we imagine the authors had to do to write these books.

This questions helps us think about what work (if any) writers have to do.

 The purpose of our whole-class teaching in fact, is to plant ideas and help children see them as real possibilities.

 Catching children in the act of trying things on their own is our only true way of knowing whether they are getting it- the it being all the writing curriculum we are offering up as possibilities in our teaching.

 Looking at a finished piece of writing we can see what the children know, but watching and listening to them as they write can help us capture so much more insight and information, especially in terms of understanding their process.

  Should be between 5-10 minutes Purpose of these conferences is to offer children individualized instruction in their writing work.

   ◦ At first don’t even look at what the student has. Talk instead  This is to have the student feel like they know what they are writing about and know it well Help the children to remember to put spaces between their words ◦ Also to reread and reread often So they won’t forget what they have already written

   Help the children become more independent in their ability to get the words down on the page Help generate better and better spelling for words they are using Set specific agendas for individual children so to get over some hump in their writing