Writing Workshop

My goal this year is to fully implement a writing workshop. The central features include:
• a 10-15 minute mini-lesson about topics, principles, genres, or conventions
• 30 minutes of student writing time
• 1-2 minute conferences with students during writing time to keep them moving forward in their pieces
• 4 days a week (Monday-Thursday)

Our 90-minute LA block breaks down like this:
1. Independent reading (15mins)
2. Poem of the day (15mins)
3. Writing mini-lesson (15mins)
4. Student writing (30mins)
5. Shared reading (15mins)

As you can see, every minute is accounted for with no time allotted for transitions. Therefore, the biggest challenge I'm dealing with now is TIME, or, more precisely, lack of it. In order for this to work, I need to squeeze every second out of every minute. Either that, or something's gotta give!

The first issue is that the poetry piece has been too successful. Students have so much to say about the poems that we’ve consistently gone over 15 minutes. We spend 20-25 minutes talking about some of them. So where has that additional time been taken from? Shared reading.

The second issue is that I talk too much and my mini-lessons run about 20-25 minutes. Where do I make up the time? Shared reading.

You see the pattern. Shared reading has gotten the short end of the LA stick. After NECAP, I’m going to start using a kitchen timer to keep myself on track. When the timer goes off, poem-of-the-day time is over. Even if it means cutting off a student mid-comment ☺

Perhaps my biggest challenge has been getting to every student at least every other day during their writing time. Beginning sixth graders are still so needy. They ask, "Does this sound okay?" and don't have the confidence to move forward in pieces without input. I sit down with a student and 5 minutes later I'm still there with the same kid. I know I have to sit, ask how things are going, give a suggestion to move him forward, and go on to the next student. This is going to be a huge shift for me, because I have much to say about student writing. I could easily spend 30 minutes with one student on one piece, but that's not fair to the other 17 students.

The good news is that I’m enjoying the Language Arts block even more than I did last year. I’m learning to appreciate all that poetry has to offer, and I’m energized by students’ enthusiasm for the selections we’ve shared. I’d hate to see this fall by the wayside, but I know I have to limit students’ responses to keep this chunk at the 15-minute mark. I know the workshop will pick up momentum as students get used to the procedure and learn how to become the first responders to their own writing. 15 minutes will be tough when it comes to shared reading, but one possible solution is to invest in more book copies so students can do the reading at home (Although that brings up a whole new set of issues, like what to do when a student doesn’t read at home).

There are a lot of kinks to work out, but reflecting on the first month of school, I’m pleased with the direction my students and I are moving.

First Writing Assessment

This weekend I had the pleasure of reading my students' first major writing piece -- The Giver endings. They are really pretty good! (Nice work, Anita!) Since my goal is still to explore the most effective ways of giving writing feedback, I thought I'd blog about this first batch.

First, a summary of the assignment and process:
The kids always hate the ending of The Giver, so I give them the assignment of writing their own ending, using one of two jumping-off points in the book. They have to emulate Lois Lowry's narrative style (third person limited), genre (science fiction), and tone. We started by having a fish bowl discussion about the ending as Lowry wrote it. Then kids brainstormed, drafted, had peer conferences, and wrote a revision plan before revising. We had a mini lesson on revising, and I gave them a list of revision suggestions (make the beginning more exciting, change words, add description, add tension - arguments, challenges, problems - add dialogue, clarify confusing parts, remove boring parts, make ending more interesting). I was amazed with the time they took on revision. In my experience, kids usually race through this step, but they really got into it. Before editing, we had a mini lesson on punctuating dialogue (which was review from last year). I had to work one-on-one with a few kids who were having trouble, but most got it. We went into depth about dialogue that is interrupted by tags, and talked about varying the structure of dialogue. Kids edited, using a check list that I gave them (which included all of the conventions we've focused on so far this year), and then they peer-edited (but they weren't allowed to actually change anyone's writing -- just to make suggestions). Then we printed, stapled, and I went home to read.

Since changing my writing grade scale to M/N/S/O, I realized I no longer had to use a rubric that enumerated point value for everything. Still, I wanted to make sure that I gave feedback in a number of areas, so I made myself a template:

Writer:
Assignment: The Giver Ending
Ms. Paull’s feedback

Three things I liked:

One main suggestion:

Conventions to work on:

Grade (N/S/O): S

I put the template on my computer, and did not allow myself to hold a pen while reading. This kept me from marking up the kids' stories. Instead, I created a list for each kid of the conventions (mechanics) that they need to work on. I really liked doing this. It felt more useful that finding and marking each of their mistakes, but also addressed the goal of showing them what they need to work on. I also liked forcing myself to find 3 positive things to say, and to have the same number for each kid, regardless of the quality of their work. For the "one main suggestion," I limited myself to content and style, and left out mechanics (since that was already included elsewhere). When it came to deciding between N, S and O, it was still a bit difficult. I tended to give most kids S, with a few exceptional O's, and a few N's. I struggled with N's... There were definitely some pieces that "need improvement," but most of them also had some really positive things going on that I wanted to focus on. I'm still a bit torn about this... I think the more I use this grading scale, the more I'll feel comfortable distinguishing between an N and an S, and an S and an O.

If you're still reading, thanks! And happy new school year!