Writing Workshop Initial Thoughts

     I'm always apprehensive to start a new textbook. They seem so boring and daunting to read and write responses on, especially since I have been doing so since the beginning of time, or so it feels like. But when I opened this book I immediately was comforted by the familiar voice of conversation. Katie Wood Ray is just like any other teacher trying to figure out what works and what doesn't work in a classroom. It's also nice to feel like I have a partner trying to investigate the scary task of Writing Workshops. To quote Ray, "The most important goal is that (her) students write with purpose and intention first-to enrich their lives in significant ways-and that out of this they learn to write well."This is what gets lost in translation I feel. With such strict standards placed upon our students and ourselves, we lose sight of the most important goal. It is not simply to have our students learn how to write, it is to instill in them a sense of pride and need to write. 

     Since this is my last semester before student teaching, I have been placed in a third grade classroom two days a week. I can see a stark contrast between my classroom and the way an affective writing workshop plays out. The students in my classroom seem to have no respect for writing, I understand that they are third graders and I'm sure that when I was that age I had a lack of interest in writing as well,  but something has changed inside of me since then and I couldn't imagine having a classroom of my own where writing was thrown to the curb. I'm only 5 chapters in to this book and I can already tell it will have a major impact on the way I implement strategies to creating effective workshops. The main component that I have taken away so far have been the essential characteristics of writing workshops, which are...

1. Choices about content

2. Time for writing

3. Teaching

4. Talking

5. Periods of focused study

6. Publication rituals

7. High expectations and safety 

8. Structured management

     In my opinion this should be used as a checklist and if you can check all of these characteristics off, then you should have one heck of a successful writing workshop.