students in classroom illustration
In 2010, the state of Florida joined the ranks of 44 states in our nation that have made the move toward teaching the Common Core. Common Core refers to the standards that provide a well-defined understanding of what students are expected to learn. This helps teachers and parents know what they need to do to help their student or child. Common Core is designed to prepare our students with the knowledge and skills needed for success in college and the workplace.
Common Core focuses on mastery of standards rather than on single skill development and since it is being implemented almost nationwide it creates a “common” language among teachers, students, families, and the communities. In 2014, the FCAT will be replaced with the Partnership for Assessment of College Readiness for College and Careers (PARC).
With Common Core calling for a broader range of writing tasks for students such as participating in shared research and writing projects, and composing informative/explanatory texts and opinion pieces, Writer’s Workshop lends itself nicely to aligning common core standards with students’ written work while taking a writing process approach by prewriting (organizing one’s thoughts before writing), writing or drafting, revising (going back to the written work and making it better), editing (fixing mistakes), and finally, publishing a final draft. Writer’s Workshop provides numerous opportunities to work on writing independently and with peers while utilizing and exploring a variety of resources.
Writer’s Workshop has been around for many years in the classroom. It is a well-organized system that provides direct teacher instruction with modeled writing, time for students to write independently and apply the skills learned, and the opportunity for teachers to meet with students on a daily basis to offer support, directly monitor their progress, and provide ongoing feedback.
Mini Lesson The first part of Writer’s Workshop focuses on a mini lesson. This is a great opportunity for a teacher to offer explicit writing instruction and to model good writing for students. Mini lessons tackle certain challenges writers might face as they explore different types of writing, such as a letter, a poem, or a response to something they read.
Teacher-Student Conferencing After students go off to work on their writing independently and with peers, teachers will work with individual students; this is called conferencing. Conferencing is an important part of Writer’s Workshop. The teacher does not conference with every student every day because students also will work with their peers, engage in ongoing conversations about writing, and critique each other’s work. Conferencing allows teachers to individualize their instruction based on the information they gather from the meetings. In a classroom where Writer’s Workshop is carried out in an organized and systematic way, teachers are able to monitor student progress on a weekly basis throughout the entire school year.
Sharing or “Author’s Chair” Students are given the opportunity to share their work at the close of Writer’s Workshop. Sharing is an important component of Writer’s Workshop because it is important for students to see and hear their peers’ written work and be able to provide an opinion that may help the writer. Students learn to make constructive comments to their peers.
In Writer’s Workshop, teachers don’t test their students on every new concept presented. When mini lessons are delivered in a thoughtful and engaging way that addresses student needs, and students are given encouragement and sufficient writing time to try out new things they’ve learned, the concepts will start to show up in their writing.
Parents can help with Writing at Home Parents can help their children by asking specific questions about their writing, such as: What are you working on in your writing this week? Are you writing about a book or story read in class or answering questions from the text? Parents can also work on writing skills at home and encourage writing opportunities, such as writing a thank you card for a present.
Parents of younger children can encourage their children to write at home using letter sounds to form words to label a picture they have drawn and to write a sentence about it. Try “stretching” the word by thinking about the beginning, middle and ending sounds of a word. A kindergartner, for example, may spell the word house as hos. This is okay and is demonstrates they are using their letter sound knowledge and applying it in their writing. Parents can also encourage younger children to use some of their basic sight words in their writing, including words like I, am, it, see, to, at, he. It’s important to remember that writing is a developmental process and it is better for your children to try to write their words on their own rather than have you spell for them.
For more information on Common Core, visit: www.corestandards.org.
Darlene Pellechia is a Collier County Public School Teacher, FGCU Graduate student, and mom of three.