I recently finished student teaching in 2nd grade and one of my favorite times of the day was writer's workshop. I had never witnessed a classroom environment that included writing instruction, so I was thrilled to hear that my cooperating teacher set aside time four days a week for writer's workshop. She soon became a mentor for me as a writer and a teacher of writing. I feel that this one semester has given me a good foundation and has left me asking even more questions about writer's workshop, how to choose mentor texts, and how I want my writer's workshop to look in the future.
Writer's workshop is important to me because it allows best practices to emerge and it's flexible to various grade levels, curriculum, and student needs. The use of mentor texts during writer's workshop is a best practice as it goes along with Vygotsky's theory of the Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD) (1978). The zone of proximal development means that students learn when they have the right amount of challenge and have the support of a more knowledge other (MKO). Mentor text, along with the teacher, serve as MKOs during writer's workshop. Through reading the first chapter of Mentor Text: Teaching Writing Through Children's Literature, K-6, I learned more specific information about choosing a mentor text and what it means for a book to be a mentor text, where previously I had just been borrowing mentor texts from other teachers (Dorfman & Cappelli, 2017). The most important things I learned about mentor texts were that good mentor texts have many opportunities for lessons and you must first read the text as a reader and then read the text as a writer. Another best practice that comes from writer's workshop is the opportunity to help students develop a growth mindset and reflective learning practice which carries over into other subject areas. Finally, writer's workshop is a great example of the gradual release of responsibility. Specifically Dorfman and Cappelli state "The Your Turn lessons incorporate a gradual release of responsibility model: a demonstration of the strategy, a shared and/or guided experience in which students can learn and practice together, and then an opportunity to try the strategy or technique on their own" (2017, p. 17). On top of best practices, writer's workshop is time where students get to make personal connections with their teacher, get creative, and be themselves.
Obviously if one incorporates writer's workshop into their classroom then students must have a writers workshop notebooks. This is where I have some questions. Do you let students take their notebooks home? Ralph Fletcher, author and educational consultant, suggest that you should have and encourage students to take their notebooks home (2001). If yes, then how do you provide enough structure for what you are doing during writer's workshop time and then what students are writing on their own time? What if they lose it?
Some challenges that I will face:
-I lack confidence writing
-Breaking my mindset that "literary borrowing" is cheating (when writer's imitate the writing style of mentor text) (Dorfman and Cappelli, 2017, p. 7). I did not know that this imitation had a specific term and I definitely consider it cheating.
Favorite Quote:
"And where I can store little pieces of strength" -John Mihaltses, a 5th grader from Long Island, NY (found in Fletcher, 2001, p. 2).