Chapter 1-5 Thoughts...

I found the first chapter in Ray’s The Writing Workshop: Working through the Hard Parts (And They’re All Hard Parts) to be very helpful. Ray made several points in the importance of writing workshop in the classroom. In particular, I found Ray’s statement of students “using the writing process rather than doing the writing process” (p. 4), interesting. I agree that students should be taught the writing process, however during writing workshop students should have the opportunity to write about whatever may interest them and use the writing process as they write what they desire. Additionally, there is great importance in allowing students to choose their own topics for writing workshop. I strongly believe that students will enjoy and become intrigued in writing if they have the opportunity to write on their own topics. As the chapter expressed concern in giving students practice in writing to prompts as they will during testing, I have the same concerns. I question whether teachers should have writing prompts for students to write on every once in awhile. However, I wonder if giving students a few prompts to choose from would be more beneficial for preparing for testing rather than only giving one?

Furthermore, in chapter two, I found whether integrating writing into other subjects was beneficial for writing workshop. The more I thought about using writing in multiple subjects, I feel that teachers will focus mainly on content of writing when writing is used in multiple subjects. I believe that during the day, there should be an additional time for writing workshop in which students have the opportunity to write in the style, format, and even content of their choice. Although integration is wonderful and I support integrating, I have to agree with the author that students should still have a different writing workshop time. In my opinion, students can never have too much writing experience. I wish I had as much experience in writing and the opportunities that the book explains.

Lastly, I found the chapter on time to be very important. One important time should be writing workshop. As I read this chapter, I learned that time should be consistent. I never really thought about being consistent with time. I also found that having structure during that allotted time is important. Ray stated that there should be three parts of writing workshop: “Focus Lesson, Independent Writing Time, and Sharing” (p. 55). I loved the fact that sharing should always be incorporated into writing workshop. This gives students time to share with others and receive feedback and positive reinforcement on their writing. In return, I feel that students will become more confident in their writing and feel that they can be a writer and people enjoy their writing. Overall, I felt the entire chapter gave me great insight in the structure and content of writing workshop in the classroom.


Ray, K. (2001). The writing workshop: working through the hard parts (and they’re all hard parts). Illinois: National Council of Teachers of English.