• Dear Families,

     

    Welcome to Writing Workshop! Writing Workshop is an approach to the teaching of writing that lives in graduate school writing programs, in college writing classes, and in your child’s classroom. The aim of Writing Workshop is to help children become powerful, passionate, and independent writers.

     

    In Writing Workshop, class begins with a minilesson, in which the teacher demonstrates a writing strategy that will help children become more powerful writers. Then children go off to work on their writing. Very young writers will write one or two pieces during a single workshop. Older writers will work on a piece over several days or a week. While the children write the teacher works with small groups or confers with individual writers.

     

    Your child will write stories, essays, articles, books, and poetry in the writing workshop. They’ll learn about something called writing process. All professional writers follow a writing process. In writing process, writers collect ideas, they draft, they revise, and they publish. Sometimes they move through this process quickly, and sometimes they take more time for parts of the process.

     

    Your children will have a variety of tools to support them in school and at home. These include:

     

    • Writing strategies - help writers become more powerful. They’ll learn these strategies during Writing Workshop.
    • Mentor texts - writers study model texts, which are usually by published writers, to learn more about the art of writing.
    • Checklists - our school uses writing checklists from the Teachers College Reading and Writing Project. These checklists support children in understanding expectations and setting personal goals.
    • Charts and mini-charts - teachers create a record of what they’ve taught, on large posters called charts or in mini-charts. These tools remind children of what they’ve learned.
    • Spelling and word charts - children often have personal or class lists of words they are working to spell accurately.

     

    Across the year, our writing curriculum is divided into units of study. A unit of study, might focus on fiction, or essay. At the end of most units of study, we’ll have a publishing celebration.

     

    Mostly, Writing Workshop will help your child develop an identity as a writer. We hope it’s a beautiful, and life-changing experience.