Writing workshop with Our
Youngest Writers
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A child who is gaining control over the
conventions of written language and who is
using language to craft literature
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From the first day students should think of
writing workshop as a time when they get to
make stuff
Making stuff drives all of our teaching with our
youngest writers
Make books
Supplies are everything they represent worlds of
possibilities for students
Create a context that feels familiar to them
Being able to choose activities from a range of
options is very important for young children
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When only have a Journal page or a space for
a illustration and a few lines students tend to
write a small amount
Making Books With Multiple pages, students
have seen books so they know their should
be something on every page
Encourages volume
Illustrations help them make important
meanings
Students work is so important to them, listen
to them explain it
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Students thinking of themselves as authors of
books is the starting point to learn like
writers
Think more about just the text, start to think
of the meaning
When students see new types of writing and
notice things they will try to incorporate into
own writing
Eventually learn they need to read the kind of
think they are trying to write
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Free writing is the only kind of writing there
is in young writers
All about creating a space in the day when
children are very free to experiment, explore,
and approximate with writing.
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Countless pieces of writing in many different
forms and genres
Represent ideas with illustrations
Generated spelling for hundreds of words
Use ordinary words over and over
Made decisions about punctuation
Figured out how to begin and end pieces
Used writing in other subjects and to help
them learn to do things outside of writing
workshop
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Build up enthusiasm for the writing workshop
that they will be doing everyday
Need a general understanding of what they
will be doing and what workshop time is for
Show examples of work from students in the
past
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How everything will work in the room during
workshop time
Perform a walk through with students
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Get tools ready
Find the best place for you to work
You may talk- asking a friend for help,
sharing idea…
Write until time runs out
Be ready to listen
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Students need to know what it means to be
finished with a piece of writing
Children should be able to finish and move
on to something new without a teacher’s
intervention
Many options for where finished work goes
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Learning about how our language works
should happen all day
Need to supply a rich variety of activities and
engagements
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reading aloud
talking into our routines
word study
center work
songs and games
writing to support other work
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Everything in the classroom should be a
learning opportunity and create a
surrounding of print resources
Use to reference
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Alphabet charts
number charts
color charts
calendars
word walls
etc.
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Every time we read aloud to children we are
teaching writing
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We need to believe that students come to
school already on their way learning to write
Get students started writing away and see
what they can do
Keep them writing so that they learn more
about writing and will hopefully be able to
use writing successfully in their lives someday
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Minilessons help create that “somebody could
try this” energy around children's writing.
Children make connections from seeing
something in a book to imagining it as a
specific possibility for someone in the room.
Make children feel like they are writing books,
staple some pages together so they feel like
they are making books.
When they feel like they make books they
look at books like they can do the same.
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The purpose of the minilesson is not to
establish some writing for the children to do
during writing workshop each day.
Instead the purpose is to fill the room with
ideas for how they might do that bookmaking
better and better.
Each minilesson should end with the students
envisioning a new possibility for their work.
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Topics for minilessons can be the same in
grades 1-12 but what they write about and
how they write will be different.
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The goal of a minilesson is that students
develop:
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A sense of self as a writer
Ways of readying the world as writers
Ways of reading text like writers
And a sense of audience
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What are these books about?
◦ This questions help us get at the topic potential in
this genre
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How do we think the authors get the ideas for
these books?
◦ This question helps us think about how we might
choose a topic for this genre.
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What do we imagine the authors had to do to
write these books.
◦ This questions helps us think about what work (if
any) writers have to do.
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The purpose of our whole-class teaching in
fact, is to plant ideas and help children see
them as real possibilities.
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Catching children in the act of trying things
on their own is our only true way of knowing
whether they are getting it- the it being all
the writing curriculum we are offering up as
possibilities in our teaching.
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Looking at a finished piece of writing we can
see what the children know, but watching and
listening to them as they write can help us
capture so much more insight and
information, especially in terms of
understanding their process.
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Should be between 5-10 minutes
Purpose of these conferences is to offer
children individualized instruction in their
writing work.
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At first don’t even look at what the student
has.
◦ Talk instead
 This is to have the student feel like they know what
they are writing about and know it well
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Help the children to remember to put spaces
between their words
Also to reread and reread often
◦ So they won’t forget what they have already written
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Help the children become more independent
in their ability to get the words down on the
page
Help generate better and better spelling for
words they are using
Set specific agendas for individual children so
to get over some hump in their writing