Writing Workshop: The Essential Guide
By Ralph Fletcher and JoAnn Portalupi
Heineman 2001
ISBN 0-325-00362-9

I think this book is what I have been needing for a while. I have always wanted kids to have choices about their writing and freedom to work on their classwork independently and productively. I know whenever I like an assignment the work time is over before I am done and if I don’t like the assignment the class never ends. I tried in the past to do writing workshop in the class. I loved it. The kids seemed to like it. But, my supervisors were not impressed. Part of this could have been how I structured the workshop. I didn’t know how to keep track of the kids work and some kids were content to never finish any writing piece. This book reaffirms my feelings of the benefits of writing workshops and provides structures and reasoning to support workshop approaches to writing.

The appendix in this book had a lot of good worksheets for tracking student work and student self-evaluation. There are also strategies for different mini-lessons that are helpful for different grade levels. The timeline in the back of the book is great for setting up your workshop. The first thing, which I often struggle with, is to set up rules, routines, and make a safe environment. It also discusses all the parts of a working workshop; mini-lessons, writing time, and sharing time. Like all good manuals this book has a troubleshooting section. This addressed many of the problems I had found in my class.

There were some things I found to be invaluable in this book: Let the kids take ownership. Give them time (often to everyday). Not everything must or should be finished. Take small steps (focus on one thing at a time). Focus on the positives. Teach the writer not the writing.

In a busy world with too many tests to pass the workshop often gets shortened or eliminated. I hope I can hold on to the writer’s workshop in my class because it is very valuable in student’s growth as writers and searchers of the joy of literature.