Writer's Workshop - the beginnings

Before the start of the year, in between the madness of setting up the classroom and psyching myself up for my first term of teaching, I was relying very much on Pinterest for inspiration. Oh? You too? Yes, yes, yes. It is us bloggers' greatest strengths and deepest weakness.

Back to the start of year. I was really interested when I discovered Writer's Workshop and wanted to try it out for myself. Granted, I have not been able to implement it as ideally as it ought to. Did not predict how much I would be out of the room between PDs, planning days and mentoring sessions. Wowzah! First year teaching is full on!

 I heavily based our Writer's Notebooks on Steph's from Apples of Your Eye. Genius. I love it. Check out her post Writer's Notebook Organization.

Here is what young Isabelle has been doing this term.

Title: Complete with a dedication. (Insert nawwww!)

Writing Ideas: Heart Map, Ideas for Writing, Authority List, Treasure Map and Memory Hand (Isabelle just needs the heading for her Memory Hand). This will serve as inspiration for the minions when writer's block hits. Hopefully this will reduce the "Miss D, I don't know what to write" levels.

I owe Steph for sharing her ideas so that determined yet lost teachers can have a crack at it.

Writers' VOICES: The back of our Writer's Notebooks is dedicated to our writing goals. We are going to be focusing on choosing a goal based on the six traits of writing. This is our intro to the six traits. As a whole class, the minions theorised which trait matched each analogy of the picture. This was yet again inspired by ANOTHER Pinterest discovery from Lindsay at My Life as a Third Grade Teacher and her post 6 Traits of Writing Flashback.

The minions then completed the top section explaining the analogies. It was a real insight to read these and see if they truly grasped the concept.

About the Author: Of course every serious writer needs to include an About the Author section so readers can find out more. We started by researching and analysing a few online About the Authors - Jeff Kinney and J.K. Rowling - and adding some notes in our Writer's Notebook

Using these notes and after I modelled my own version, the kiddies went ahead and wrote their own. Isabelle's is about to edit hers.

Hopefully this will lead in smoothly to our Biography unit in History.

Many blessings to you all xx