writer's workshop

Coincidental to this week's assigned readings -- chapters 1-3 of Regie Routman's Writing Essentials -- I received an e-newsletter from Edutopia (is it clear by now that I love this site? ;)) about the writer's workshop as an excellent tool for differentiation. Similar lines of thinking are pursued in both Routman and in the Edutopia article, titled The Writing Workshop: A Valuable Tool for Differentiation and Formative Assessment. The author of the Edutopia article, Todd Finley, states that we need to get students past a fear of not writing correctly and to instead write from a place where right and wrong aren't the ultimate criteria. Like Routman, Finley asserts the need for students to experience false starts, make mistakes, collaborate, and adjust. Both authors see good writing as the result of this process, which doesn't start and end with skills formation.

The writer's workshop is used in my own main placement classroom. The ideas contained in Routman's first three chapters -- about simplifying the teaching of writing, celebrating student writing, and showing students your own writing life, respectively -- were all clearly modeled by my master teacher. As I was reading Routman's ideas, I found that for most of them I could point directly to an example in my main placement classroom. Writing small moments? We did that. Modeling the writing process for students on the overhead? My teacher did that, too. Open sharing? Celebration of writing? De-emphasizing "skills" like spelling everything right the first go? Yes, yes, and yes. So far, I like the writer's workshop and see it as a great tool for inspiring our kids to view themselves as writers and enjoy writing.

My nascent understanding of the writer's workshop leads me to believe that differentiation should more or less naturally happen -- it seems inherent to the model. To an extent, that is what I see in my 4th grade classroom. Everyone's writing at their own level, and everyone has both their own strengths and areas they could work more on. However, I am also noticing some kids shutting themselves out of the process entirely. One boy, in particular, didn't write more than a few lines in his writer's notebook the entire four weeks I was there. I know, as Routman says, that for some kids simply getting down a title is an achievement. We've celebrated that for this boy. No technique seems to help this boy see himself as a writer, though. He's so set against the notion of writing that sometimes he literally rolled around on the floor to avoid it. I'm very curious to see what he's doing -- whether he's writing more, less, or the same amount -- when I return in January. If he's blossomed, I'll definitely want the low down on what my master teacher found to inspire him.