Writer's Workshop

Before taking this class I had never heard of the Writer's Workshop that is now being utilized in classrooms. Reading this book has made me excited about the possibility teaching this method in my own classroom. The teachers that came up with this method were very methodical and thought about each step in the the writing process with great care. By spending a small amount of time each week in the Writer's Workshop students will greatly improve on their writing, reading, and comprehension skills. Also, this type of setting helps the student to build confidence in themselves and their writing as they learn to take more risks. Our country wants every child that goes through our school system to be literate with our language. To truly do that though, the child should have a strong grasp on the language, and all that goes into producing a solid writing work. In my opinion, this Writer's Workshop seems to be well on the way to achieving that goal. 

I really enjoyed how Shelley Harwayne describes the notebook to the children. She says, "Imagine doing the kind of writing that you will want to save for a lifetime. When you are twenty, fifty, or eighty you will still keep these beautiful bound books in a special place because you will always want to recall what kind of kid you were, what you paid attention to, and what you thought about when you were young." When showed how important this writing could be to them later in life, the child takes more pride and ownership in their work and wants to achieve high goals. This gets them excited about writing! I thought it was very thorough that the writers included exact lists of the tools you as the teacher and your students will need to accomplish the workshop. I especially loved the quote, "this means allowing teachable moments to take over and slowing down when our students are not ready to move on." The writers on this book, fellow teachers, truly put their students above all else and genuinely WANT every one of them to succeed.

I loved these first four chapters of the No-Nonsense Guide to Teaching Writing. I think they lay out the Writer's Workshop in such a way that is interesting and (hopefully) gets the readers excited about implementing this workshop in their own class. I will be honest, I highlighted and underlined so many thoughts and ideas in these chapters that there is no way for me to comment on everything I loved!