Juli Kendall's Weekly
Writing Workshop Journal
A MiddleWeb Listserv Project
Members of the MiddleWeb Discussion List and other interested teachers
are joining together to explore the Writing Workshop and other ideas about
supporting young adolescent writers and readers. Juli Kendall, a reading-writing
teacher/coach in Long Beach, California, is helping moderate the discussion.
Last year, Juli kept a weekly journal from her Reading Workshop.
This year, Juli is continuing her journals, but this time she's focusing
on her Writing Workshop. Find out more about our project at our Reading/Writing
Workshop homepage. You'll find Juli's background article here.
Links to many of the tools created by Juli and her colleagues are embedded
in these journals. Most often, when you click on them, a PDF file will begin
to download. You'll find a list of the downloads here.
If you'd like to join the daily discussion that parallels Juli's Journals,
find out how here.
Writing Workshop
Week #5:
How We Launch Our
Writing Workshop
Whenever a new ship is launched, it's tradition that a bottle of champagne
be broken across the bow. If, for some reason, the bottle doesn't break,
spewing foam all over, it's seen as a bad omen for the ship.
According to the Ocean Planet website for the Smithsonian
Institute, "wine poured upon the deck before a long voyage represents
a libation to the gods which will bring good luck. 'Christening' a ship
by breaking a bottle of champagne across her bow at the time of launching
arose from this practice."
(This Custom of the Sea comes from the Smithsonian Institution's "Ocean
Planet" exhibition
and from the book, OCEAN PLANET, Writings and Images of the Sea,
by Peter Benchley and Judith Gradwohl.)
Here's the deal: we want our Writing Workshop to "launch" just
like a ship that gets covered with champagne. Getting off to a good start
is important.
Setting Sail
"The Writing Life: Launching the Writing Workshop," is the first
unit on our Curricular Calendar
for Writing Workshop. We need to gather read-aloud books, new writing notebooks,
samples of student work from last year, and our own writing notebooks. Plus,
we need to recruit "mentors" to show us how to do some of this
stuff, and then we can start to teach.
We work from our curricular calendar because it "helps us envision
what a whole year's worth of study might include." These words from
Isoke Nia's article, "Units
of Study in the Writing Workshop," tell us that we're not flying
by the seat of our pants. We need to have a well-thought-out plan.
Units of study are essential to the writing workshop because without them,
what is the work of the workshop on a day-to-day basis? Like a learning
map you and your students chart together, your unit studies create a year's
worth of curriculum for the workshop that exposes students to new possibilities
as writers.
Our first week is spent bringing our students together as a community of
writers. We address them as "Writers" to let them know their job.
Using our mini assessment unit and their work from last year, we want to
help our students see themselves as authors. As we read aloud wonderful
books, we want to have conversations with our writers about what makes writing
special in the books we are reading.
We're beginning by immersing ourselves in the work of Sandra Cisneros, Patricia
Polacco, Angela Johnson and Cynthia Rylant. These "Mentor Authors"
will teach us volumes about writing this year.
Rituals and Structures
The second week we begin helping kids learn the rituals and structures of
Writing Workshop. They see themselves as members of a writing community.
They learn to understand the look, feel and sounds of a classroom where
writing matters. We carefully teach each of these structures:
1. Independent Writing Time
We use an Independent Writing Rubric
to help students understand their responsibilities. We developed this rubric
after having success using the Independent Reading Rubric. It has a positive
impact on how seriously our writers take their writing. We also use these
reminders to help students stay on task.
Writers write the whole time.
Writers keep their pencils moving.
Writers make their own writing decisions
Writers stay in one good writing place.
Writers do not get distracted.
Writers cross things out when they are revising and editing.
Writers use what they know to help themselves spell words.
2. Student roles during mini lessons
Kids learn to pay close attention to these quick lessons that focus on one
aspect of writing. At first, most of the time is spent on management and
organization of Writing Workshop. Things like where to get paper, how to
organize Writing Folders, what to do if you need to sharpen your pencil,
etc.
3. Student roles during conferences
Being able to work independently is a prerequisite to having conferences
with students. Once Independent Writing is up and running, conferences can
begin. Our students must understand that while we are conferring with others,
they are expected to be responsible writers.
Next: Writer's Notebooks
Download Juli's Curricular Calendar
(map) for her Writing Workshop
Download a comparison of Juli's Reading
and Writing Workshop plans
Read next week's journal
Read last week's journal
Read Juli's backgrounder about her work
Back to Juli's journal index
Back to the Reader Workshop Index Page