{"id":1837,"date":"2012-04-04T12:57:47","date_gmt":"2012-04-04T19:57:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.sd41.bc.ca\/learningtech\/?p=1837"},"modified":"2012-04-04T13:03:09","modified_gmt":"2012-04-04T20:03:09","slug":"writers-workshop-each-step-in-the-process","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blogs.sd41.bc.ca\/learningtech\/2012\/04\/writers-workshop-each-step-in-the-process\/","title":{"rendered":"Writers Workshop – Each Step in the Process"},"content":{"rendered":"

“A journey of a thousand miles begins with one step.”<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

 <\/p>\n

I was reminded of \u00a0this quote as we worked through our recent session on ‘Writers Workshop<\/a>‘. \u00a0Not only the global concepts of ‘writers workshop’ (lots of time to write and explore, choice and voice, conferring during and not after the fact…) but what this looked like in the digital world? \u00a0Our goal was to use\u00a0Google Docs<\/a><\/strong>\u00a0as an avenue to explore, critically challenge \u00a0and grow our student writers. \u00a0The advantage of Google Docs was the availability of anytime, anywhere as well as the collaborative nature of the tool allowing both teacher and student to work, support and revise in real time.<\/p>\n

We started with a\u00a0visual sequence<\/a>\u00a0of the writing process to frame our journey and then dug into a couple of “mini lessons” examples (adding detail, voice). Mentor texts used for each were\u00a0Love You Forever\u00a0(R. Munsch) and\u00a0Voices in the Park\u00a0(A. Browne).<\/p>\n

One of the most difficult parts to grapple was the structure of a “mini lesson”. \u00a0Trying to keep it to 10-15 minutes is a challenge for any teacher. \u00a0These sessions are meant to be focused on specific elements, allowing for majority of time for actual writing. \u00a0A good resource that explains this is\u00a0Day by Day<\/a><\/strong>\u00a0by Ayres and Shubitz.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

What I took away – \u00a0‘mini lesson’ was focused on a specific target, making it possible to keep to 10-15 minutes, use only specific pages in the mentor text that provided a clear example of the focus. \u00a0Finally the lesson was teacher-directed so student input was not included (or kept to a minimum) in the mini time period. \u00a0Students were asked to quickly return to writing in order to practice the skill on their written piece.<\/p>\n

Google Apps for Education provides us with a coordinated collaborative environment to further our writing efforts. \u00a0We were able to easily create IDs\/passwords following our blog ID conventions. \u00a0Another collaborative community was born.<\/p>\n

Our little pilot writing project of seven classes across the district is excited to see what will happen to student writers as they engage deeper with the writing process. Our history tells us that when others (even family members) join in the writing conversation, that both the writer and the writing is taken to a different level.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“A journey of a thousand miles begins with one step.”   I was reminded of \u00a0this quote as we worked through our recent session on ‘Writers Workshop‘. \u00a0Not only the global concepts of ‘writers workshop’ (lots of time to write and explore, choice and voice, conferring during and not after the fact…) but what this…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4642,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[111,81,20],"tags":[25,30,35,36,37,38,41,42,43,66,69,77,78],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blogs.sd41.bc.ca\/learningtech\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1837"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blogs.sd41.bc.ca\/learningtech\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blogs.sd41.bc.ca\/learningtech\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.sd41.bc.ca\/learningtech\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4642"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.sd41.bc.ca\/learningtech\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1837"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.sd41.bc.ca\/learningtech\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1837\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1840,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.sd41.bc.ca\/learningtech\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1837\/revisions\/1840"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blogs.sd41.bc.ca\/learningtech\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1837"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.sd41.bc.ca\/learningtech\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1837"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.sd41.bc.ca\/learningtech\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1837"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}