Writer's Workshop

Since Spring Break, we have been having a "Writer's Workshop" in the Grade 2-3 Classroom each day for about 30 - 40 minutes.  I attended an Inservice a while back where I learned from a fellow teacher how she makes this program work in her classroom.

 There are five stations in this system.  This bulletin board helps keep track of where everyone is in the process.  On two days, students write in their journals.  It may be a story, writing about their weekend, facts about something they know or poetry.  The third station is Conferencing.  Students go through a checklist with one of their writing pieces and then sit with me to do a final editing and polishing of the piece.  This is a time not to just work on spelling and other conventions but to work on expressive descriptive language , word choice, and sentence length.

Next,  I  type the edited story into book form.  The next station, called Publishing, gives time to personalize the book with pictures, a dedication, about the author, and publishing information.  The final station is called special project and that is where the students go out of the room with Mrs. Perreault and learn and create a form of writing like haiku, acrostic poems, diamond poems, etc.

At the end of the five day rotation, everyone has a book like the ones pictured above, that becomes a part of our classroom library.  Students were proud to share their first book with their parents at our Celebration of Learning.