WW 12

The Writing Workshop

Chapters 12

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This chapter seemed to be very helpful with the planning aspect of writer’s workshop.  It provided me with two examples of how the writer’s workshop would be split up over the year: one for k-1 and another for upper grade levels.  Some lessons took a week and others took up to a month.  It was nice to see the varying list because it reassured me with the fact that it is a lenient time frame.  You can postpone activities or start them earlier based on how the student’s react to the subject.  My favorite topic suggested was “ways of reading texts like writers, developing a sense of craft and genre in writing” (WW, 132.” This topic can be very challenging for students and may produce some frustration; however, if presented in the right way it can be very fun.  It is a good time to review punctuation and how writers speak to their audience.  My favorite subtopic was “a study of how writers write without using words: looking at punctuation, spacing, layout, fonts, and so on in written texts” (WW, 132).  This reminded me of the book you read in class a few weeks ago.  I cannot remember the exact name of the book, but it showed the text in different ways other than the standard left to right, paragraph form.  I think it would be fun to read this book and then have a class discussion about this topic.