Writing Workshop
Mini-Lessons
The writing workshop mini-lessons had various roles. This included time for the students to learn about different types of writing, such as persuasive, enumerative, and personal narrative writing. To teach mastery of writing forms, as a class we would read stories and unpack the information into plans. By the time students were expected to use the plan, they were very familiar with everything the plan entailed. At this time in units, my mini-lesson goals shifted depending on the needs of the students. If I noticed that students were not creating effective beginnings, the mini-lesson would focus on brilliant beginnings.
Modeling
Some days, I modeled the writing goals for students during my mini-lesson. With each new writing type, I would model how I would write a story while keeping in mind the 6-traits (organization, voice, sentence fluency, word choice, conventions, and ideas).
Guided Practice
Other days, as a class we all would compose a class story or information piece using the skills we learned and we would each write it in our individual writing journals.
Daily Independent Practice
Students practiced individual writing every day during writing workshop. Students were able to ask questions during this time and use classroom resources to help them.
During this practice, students were able to apply the concepts that were discussed in the mini-lessons to their writing.
This quite independent practice time allowed me to conference with individuals about their writing and discuss the comments I wrote in their writing journals.
During this practice, students were able to apply the concepts that were discussed in the mini-lessons to their writing.
This quite independent practice time allowed me to conference with individuals about their writing and discuss the comments I wrote in their writing journals.
This student is completing his plan before he begins writing a fictional story.
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These two students are sharing their personal narrative story ideas with each other, while they take turns filing out each other’s plans for their story. This helped to make them more aware of all aspects that needed to be included.
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