A Day Inside of Our Workshop: Rethinking Traditional Approaches Designed by Angela Stockman, WNY Young Writer’s Studio This chart provides a glimpse at two different ways to execute a day of workshop. One is teacher-centered, and the other is writer-centered. As you explore them, consider when it makes sense to use each, because one approach isn’t better than the other. Each makes sense, given writer’s needs and place within the process. Both models are reminiscent of traditional structures, but over time, I’ve made small but purposeful shifts in order to increase ownership and situate writers as teachers and leaders within our community. I find that doing so makes them far more interdependent.
A Teacher-Centered Workshop Structure
A Writer-Centered Workshop Structure
Mini-Lesson:
Optional Investigations:
Teacher invites writers to build background knowledge for new content and skills by engaging in a quick investigation of text, reflection, or small group conversation. Teachers uses direct instruction to define new learning. Modeling is provided through the use of high quality mentor text, and then, teachers often write in front of their students, making their thinking very transparent. Anchor charts capture salient points and often sustain writers through multiple lessons, tying them together in a way that creates coherence.
Teacher invites writers to participate in optional investigations., and some writers may choose to engage in these brief, inquiry-driven experiences. They center on topics that are timely for the writers who choose to participate.. Teachers do not lead this lessons. Instead, writers work together to investigate what matters and share what they learn with one another. Others may choose to dive right into their writing instead, if this is what they need to do, and some may choose to do independent investigations if this makes better sense.
Independent Writing and Conferring: Writers draft and tinker with their writing, reflecting as they go and reaching out to peers who have expertise that can forward their thinking and their work. Early in the process, teachers use this time to provide over-the-shoulder feedback to all writers. Once writers have produced enough text, true conferring takes place during this time. Teachers typically notice and take note of skills and behaviors during this time, and when necessary, they pause independent writing time to extend or reteach lessons.
Writers draft and tinker with their writing, reflecting as they go and reaching out to peers who have expertise that can forward their thinking and their work. In a writer-centered classroom, teachers expect writers to initiate and lead conferences. They coach them to do this, and they create classroom structures, spaces, and protocols that support this expectation rather than arranging and leading conferences themselves.. When they aren’t called upon to confer, teachers typically position themselves as observers during this time, noticing and taking note of skills and behaviors, and when necessary, pausing independent writing time to extend or reteach lessons. They also use what they discover to plan new investigations.
Shared Expertise and End of Session Reflections:
Shared Expertise and End of Session Reflections:
Independent Writing and Conferring:
During independent writing time, teachers notice what writers are doing well, and they invite one or two of them to model something specific about their thinking, process, craft, or behavior at the end of the session, so that others might learn from them. A bit of celebration happens during this time as well, and then writers are invited to reflect, typically in their notebooks.
Writer-centered workshops tend to create far more opportunity for invention, experimentation, and the development of diverse expertise. This is why it often makes sense to leave more time for exhibition at the end of these kinds of sessions. Typically, writers have more to share and are eager to do so. We also leave time for reflection here as well, and we use our notebooks for this work.
Created by Angela Stockman, 2014. For more information or additional resources, visit: http://makewriting.com . Creative Commons AttributionNonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0). You are free to share and adapt this resource for noncommercial purposes, as long as you attribute the work to me and link back to http://makewriting.com