Chapter 9, 10, 13 Thoughts...

“If it is a workshop, then all kinds of things need to be in that “shop” that students can work with as they go about their writing” (p. 98).

I have never thought about the resources available to children during writing workshop before. While reading, I learned that teachers should provide resources in the classroom for students to independently use during writing workshop. I believe that providing students with resources gives them opportunity to explore what they have learned and use the writing process in their own ways and time. Additionally, I love the analogy given in the book to think about whether students would be able learn about writing with the environment and resources if the teacher were not in the room (p. 94). I thought this was a great example of how teachers need to plan writing workshop and set routines and expectations, and provide students with all the resources they will need to learn about writing. I also found Ray’s examples of resources to use for writing to be very beneficial!

Throughout the reading in Ray’s book, I found that the statement of teachers writing while students write as well as monitoring their own writing process to be very important. The first time I have seen a teacher write while my class writes was last semester. Having my teacher write also during independent writing time revealed the importance and interest writing had in her life. While writing with students, I believe teachers can use what they have written to provide examples and share with children as they share with the teacher in return. While the benefits of writing with students is abundant, it saddens me that I not once in my field placement classroom have I seen a teacher write with his or her students. As a future teacher, writing with my students will definitely be an action I will perform during writing workshop each day. I hope that my future students will be able to see the interest I have in writing, the importance of writing, and the joy that can come from writing.

Lastly, Ray’s chapter on focus lessons gave me great insight into the “teaching” of writer’s workshop. In particular, I found the focus lesson being teacher centered to be interesting. Along with the book, I have always been taught in my courses in the education program about the importance of student centered lessons and the high level of involvement students should have in the classroom lessons. However, Ray made several significant remarks regarding the importance of a teacher centered focus lesson. I agree that when you involve students, conservations can spiral to long amounts of time. Therefore, a teacher centered lesson for writer’s workshop would allow students to focus on the strategy, technique, question, relationship, or convention being focused on (p. 145). Instead, I loved the suggestion of including student’s names, and “try it” exercises. This is a great way to include the students without actually spending too much time in the actual lesson.

My question that comes from focus lessons is how would teachers create a focus lesson and independent “writing” for Kindergarten students? In my experience with Kindergarteners, most cannot write sentences; therefore, do students illustrate in place of writing sentences and stories? I feel that a writing workshop would still be important in Kindergarten; I am just not sure how the content and style would be manipulated for the younger students.

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