Ep 30: How to Launch Writer's Workshop in the Upper Elementary Classroom was automatically transcribed by Sonix with the latest audio-to-text algorithms. This transcript may contain errors. Sonix is the best audio automated transcription service in 2020. Our automated transcription algorithms works with many of the popular audio file formats.
Hey, teachers, if you have a classroom and a commute, you're in the right place. I'm your host, Rachael, and I want to ride along with you each week on your ride into school. This podcast is the place for busy teachers who want actionable tips, simple strategies, and just want to enjoy their job more. Let's go.
Well, hello there, welcome to The Classroom Commute Podcast. I'm Rachael, your host. Thank you so much for joining me today. Hopefully you are joining me somewhere where it's warm, maybe you are on a walk or a poolside, wherever it is that you're tuning in today. Welcome! I'm so glad you're here. I'm a little excited because we have made it to Episode 30. I don't know if just because it's a nice round number, it feels like a milestone. But hey, I will celebrate even the little ones. If you've been with me since Episode 1, I'm so glad that you have made it all the way to Episode 30. If you are just tuning in, hopefully you've found a great place to be and learn and grow as a teacher. Episode 30, here we come.
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OK. Today we are going to talk about Writers Workshop and how to get started with Writers Workshop in your classroom. Now, if you listened in last week, we talked all about how to launch Readers Workshop in your classroom. I hope you found that episode valuable. If you haven't had a chance to listen to it, make sure you hop back to the Episode 29. If you go to classroomnook.com/podcast/29, you can get all the details about Readers Workshop. Today is going to follow a very similar format because I'm going to give you the ins and outs of how to start Writers Workshop with your students. Let's go ahead and get started.
For those of you who may have missed last week's episode, let me just give you a quick piece of information that you need to know as we begin talking about Writers Workshop. When I say workshop, I'm referring to the workshop format that includes the mini lesson which is the very beginning of your workshop time where you teach a skill or a strategy. Followed by the work period, which is going to be the bulk of your workshop time where students are going to be working independently on their own writing assignments. Then followed and wrapped up by the closing part of your workshop, where you bring students back together again. You have students share out how they use the skill or strategy that you may have taught or share a portion of their writing piece with the class. Workshop model in my definition, follows those three major components: the mini lesson, the work period and the closing. If you want to go into more detail about that, make sure you check out last week's episode, all about Reader's Workshop, where I talked a little bit more about each part of the workshop because it's very similar for Writers Workshop as well.
Now, I suggest that if you are doing Readers workshop, then you're likely going to want to do Writers Workshop as well and vice versa, because they follow the same format. It makes for great consistency throughout your day and students really only have to learn one main format and they get really good at that format. So if you're going to do workshop model, I would suggest doing it for both readers and for writers as we begin thinking about Writers Workshop at the beginning of the school year. One of the first things that I like to do when launching my Writers Workshop is to have students take a writing survey. In this survey, students can share with you how they feel about writing, what types of writing they like to do, and share anything else that they would like you to know about themselves as writers. On top of that, having your students take a writing survey will also force them to look at themselves as writers, what they enjoy, and what they might feel that they struggle with so it just provides a lot of insight for both themselves looking inward and how they view themselves. It also provides insight for you as a teacher and helps you to get to know them a little bit better. A writing survey serves as a great kickoff point to your Writers Workshop.
Now similar to Readers Workshop, if you listen to last week's episode, the first month or so of your writers workshop is all about setting the foundation for how Writers Workshop is going to look like in your classroom. Like everything else that you start at the beginning of the year, much of your instruction is going to revolve around, can you guess it? If you said routines and procedures, you would be right. Do you know if you've been listening even to the last few episodes that I am a big stickler on routines and procedures and Writers Workshop is no different. For the first few weeks, you will be getting your students acquainted with your behavioral and procedural expectations during your writing time. In fact, just like Readers Workshop we talked about last week, the mini lessons of your writers workshop will be used to teach those important expectations.
Let's first talk about the mini lesson of your Writers Workshop. Your first week of Writers Workshop, I recommend that you wait until you have a first full week of school to begin your Writers Workshop. That first week, you're going to focus on the very basics of Writers Workshop. For example, day one your mini lesson topics should be 'What is Writers Workshop?'. You will share with your students the three main components of Writers Workshop: the mini lesson, the work period and the closing. Then you will go through each component and give them details about what to expect during that time. Also during that first full week of Writers Workshop, your mini lessons will also cover topics such as how to come to and from the gathering area, what materials you'll be using for Writers Workshop, where to keep your materials, and how to take responsibility for yourself and take care of your own needs during Writers Workshop so that you're not interrupting during inappropriate times. Each of those things that I mentioned would actually be their own separate mini lesson on a different day. That would give you all of your instruction for about the first week of Writers Workshop.
During the first few weeks of Writers Workshop do not worry about actually teaching writing skills themselves. You're going to weave them in a little bit here and there but your main focus is getting students to understand how Writers Workshop works and your expectations for them during that time, both behaviorally and expectations as it relates to routines and procedures. Now, as I mentioned last week and I will mention it again this week, take your time when you are beginning Writers Workshop, because the last thing you want to do is rush into getting your students started on their first writing piece and skip all of the routines and procedural teaching then have to backtrack later on because your students seem chaotic or unfocused or don't know what to do during Writers Workshop. Once they master how to act during Writers Workshop, then they can focus on what they write.
Now, before I go any further, if you are brand new to Writers Workshop in your classroom, make sure that you grab my Teacher's Guide to Writers Workshop. It's a free resource in our Members Resource Library over at the classroomnook.com/podcast/30. I will link to how to get that guide and it will just give you all the information that you need to set up Writers Workshop in your classroom. We're gonna talk about a lot of that here in this episode but if you want to have a resource that you can refer to over and over, get your hands on that guide. Go over to the show notes and grab that.
All right, let's move on. When you think about the work period of your Writers Workshop, of course, you think about, well this is a time for my students to be writing. And of course, they're going to be doing some writing even right from the beginning but since you will most likely not begin with a specific writing unit during those first few weeks, you'll have the opportunity to use your work period to get to know your students as writers using short writing activities. You may want to provide your students with a selection of writing prompts to choose from, that will help guide their writing at the beginning. The writing your students produce at the beginning of the year will give you great insight into their writing needs. You can use simple activities like 'roll and write', which is one of my favorite writing prompts. You can grab a free 'roll and write' activity over at the show notes. Essentially what they do is, they use one die, they roll a setting, and for each number on the die, it gives them a specific setting. So for example, they roll a two, the setting is at the mall at closing time and then they roll a character. If they roll a four, their character might be a curious archaeologist. Then they roll a plot, if they roll a six maybe they find a mysterious locked box. We put it all together, they are writing a story that takes place at the mall at closing time, includes a curious archaeologist who finds a mysterious locked box. The stories can often be really silly, but it's just a fun way to get students writing at the beginning of the school year so that you can focus on the routines and the procedures, but also give students opportunities to get their writing skills back up and running, especially after a long summer where they likely haven't done a whole lot of writing at home.
In addition to short writing pieces that students would use to kind of get their feet wet again with writing. We also did a lot of work with assembling and getting acquainted with our writers notebook. Now, the writer's notebook was basically the students one stop shop for all of their writing needs. It had several sections that we would work from at different points during Writers Workshop. Next week, I have an entire episode about using readers and writers notebooks. I will save all the juicy details for then. The writer's notebook was our go to resource for all of their writing materials and goal setting tracking sheets and things like that. We would work a lot those first few weeks with getting used to using the components within their writer's notebook. The big takeaway here is that you're using the mini lesson to teach those writing routines and procedures. You're giving students a little time to practice writing just a bit in the work period of the workshop. But it's really a time for them to practice those routines and procedures that you're teaching with small, short writing pieces, and then you're gonna bring it all together again with the closing.
As we move into the closing portion of our Writers Workshop, this is going to be the time where students will share their writing with their students. So if they wrote a 'roll and write' story, they could share a portion of it or all of it, depending on the time that you have. You will also be using this time to review what you've been practicing and what you've been teaching them in the mini lesson. Of course, as you get into the school year and you really get into your writing units, the closing time will be used for students to share the skill or the strategy that you've been teaching them and that they've been applying in their own writing pieces. At the beginning of the year, it's going to be a lot of review of those writing routines and procedures. One of the things that I always tried to include regularly during our closing time as we got going in the school year was a time that we called 'authors chair' and I had a special chair, really wasn't all that special, but I made it look special. It was used specifically for this sharing time. I would invite several students, sometimes we did it just on Fridays, sometimes we did it more throughout the week, but I would have a rotating schedule where students would know ahead of time that they were going to be asked to share a portion of their writing. By having a schedule, it will help you keep the time organized and it might help students who don't like to be put on the spot to have more time to feel prepared. But for me, I was usually able to fit in two to three students in for each time that they would be sharing. I do have an entire blog post over on the web site all about using the 'share chair' or the 'author's chair', whatever you want to call it, in your classroom. Check that out at classroomnook.com/podcast/30, I will get you the link for that blog post. Like you would want to do for the mini lesson, you want to keep the closing period also short. The bulk of your Writers Workshop is going to be that work period in the center of your time. The mini lesson and the closing are short and sweet, right to the point.
Once you've established your routines and procedures for your Writers Workshop, you'll be able to start implementing your writing units into your Writers Workshop. One of the things that I like about the workshop model is that you aren't tied to any set curriculum. If your school or your district has specific things that you need to cover, you can do that inside a workshop model by using the format of mini lesson, work period, and closing but you can choose the curriculum that you need to use. So, for example, if your curriculum requires you to write an informational piece, which it likely does, your mini lesson would then be used to teach the skills and strategies for informational writing. Then students are working on their own writing informational pieces in the work period and you are free during the work period to conference with students, to work with students and so on.
And speaking of conferences, they are a huge and important element of Writers Workshop because it's the time that you are spending with individual students and really get to know them as writers. During your writing conferences you should be spending time reading students writing, giving feedback, having your students read their writing to you, and working together to help students reach some of the writing goals that they may have. You could also use your conference time to model writing strategies that that specific student can benefit from. You can tailor their instruction during their writing conferences, and of course, you can use this time to help edit and revise students writing pieces and offer support on how to make their writing better. I have an entire video tutorial all about what to do during writing conferences, so make sure you check that out over in the show notes.
One quick note about student writing, when and if you can, try to incorporate as much student choice into writing as possible. And what I mean by that is try not to dictate exactly what the students should be writing. We should be offering as much creative writing time as possible. So, for example, if you are doing an informational writing piece on animals, let them choose the animal that they want to write about, or if you can let them choose any informational topic to write about that still follows the guidelines that you're going to be teaching in your mini lessons. Please let them do that so that they can have some creativity and really feel like authentic writers. Your job is to teach them how to become better writers and their job is to choose what they write about.
As you begin thinking about setting up and establishing your Writers Workshop you will realize that it takes a lot of effort specifically at the beginning of the year. It can be a little overwhelming, especially if you don't know where to begin. If you would like a little extra support, I have an entire resource for getting started in Writers Workshop. Like the getting started in Reader's Workshop resource that I mentioned in last week's episode, the Writers Workshop resource is a step by step guide with all of the teacher lesson plans, student materials, anchor slides and even a bulletin board set for helping you set up your Writers Workshop at the beginning of the school year. This resource is completely digital friendly so you can use it in a printable format or in a digital form as well in case you do find yourself teaching virtually. I will link to that resource in the show notes at classroomnook.com/podcast/30. It will be right there waiting for you, along with the Free Teachers Guide to Writers Workshop that you can also get if you would like to have that as well.
All right. That is all I have for you today, my friends. Thank you so much for joining me today on the podcast. I will be back again next week with another episode. Until then, bye for now.
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