During the Writing Workshop, your child will:

           "Writing is like any other sort of sport. In order for you to get better at it, you have to exercise the muscle. ~ Jason Reynolds

• Mini-lessons are whole-class, short, focused lessons that center on essentials and are delivered clearly and concisely. We may teach procedures, model strategies, and techniques, reinforce previously taught strategies, and teach specific skills. The ideas for mini-lessons come from standards, curriculum, or what has been noticed in student work and on assessments.

• One of the most important components of a writing workshop is that students have blocks of independent writing time. These blocks of time occur after the mini-lesson and ideally, should be the bulk of a writing workshop. This time allows students to increase their stamina and volume of writing as writers, as well as try out new strategies taught to help them grow as writers.

• Teacher confers 1-to-1 or in a small group. Conferring is a means of both assessing and providing targeted individualized instruction to students. A writing conference is a one-to-one interaction between an individual writer and his teacher.

Class share often closes the lesson. Share time allows the teacher and students an opportunity to tie the learning threads together and then consider what comes next. It also promotes our students to be more reflective learners. We may  ask questions such as:

'What did you learn about writing today?'

'What did you learn about yourself as a writer today?'

The kids may share a word, sentence, or section that showcases their growth as a writer.  

"You don’t learn to write by going through a series of preset writing exercises. You learn to write by grappling with a real subject that truly matters to you." 

~ RALPH FLETCHER