With only a short time span to work in, I began doing Writing Workshop in the classroom as I was still researching the theory and best practices behind it. The students quickly took to Writing Workshop even though my ability to teach it was developing. Through my initial observations of students engaging in the proto-workshop, I decided to closely follow three of my students who I thought would be most interesting to observe. One student was a bit behind in general literacy skills and preferred play to studying. The second student does well academically, but has strong opinions on whether classroom activities are interesting or not. The third student will happily participate and give his full energy towards anything engaging.
As I continued to research while running the Writing Workshop in my classroom, some different themes kept arising in the research that reflected what I observed in the workshop. First, Student's self-concepts as writers played a major role in their ability to write freely and to have the confidence to share. Ideas of what makes a good writer varied from student to student, including length of work, spelling correctness, handwriting, grammar use, and varied vocabulary. Students worked to improve the skills they considered important when engaging in Writing Workshop. Sharing strategies and willingness to share were colored by students' opinions of the work they had created based on the categories they deemed important.
Secondly, teacher models and presentation styles had an impact on the writing strategies students use. I categorized my modeling techniques into three styles:
1. Verbal model- During the minilesson, students and I practiced speaking target language and vocabulary they will use to write.
2. Key word writing plus verbal model- In addition to the verbal model, some key words or partial phrases were written on the board. Most words and phrases were elicited from the students
3. Strong written model- In addition to the verbal practice, multiple example sentences or entire written samples are modeled on the white board.
Lastly, students were making positive progress over time. Using Common Core (2010) standards for writing and language for kindergarten as well as institutional expectations as guides, I analyzed the development of students' written works that occurred over the course of our Writing Workshop. These works show how students had developed writing mechanics like handwriting, punctuation, capitalization, and spelling. I also examined how students use common verbs, adjectives, prepositions, and grammar. Finally, student work was examined to see if the lessons from conferencing affected their final product.