Ch. 9, 10, & 13

        I found these three chapters to be quite useful for the future.  The first five chapters talked about what the writing workshop is, and that is important to know, but I found these chapters to be much more interesting because they begin to talk about content and ideas for the writing workshop.  It’s certainly good for us to learn about the overall scheme of what the writing workshop is as we read about in the first five chapters, but for many of us, these chapters that talk about ideas for, and implementation of, the writing workshop.  I saw it is important to us because some of us may be clueless about what kinds of things you can do in a writing workshop since it is a new concept for us.  I know I certainly received many of the worksheets Ray talks about where you correct mistakes in a sentence or paragraph, and that was writing, and the teaching was showing examples on the board or diagramming sentences.  So this idea that Ray talks about on page 95 that, “If we did nothing else but locked them up and said, ‘write,’ we would be teaching,” is a foreign idea to me.  However, I can understand what she is saying.  We are developing writers, not editors.  I’m really glad she went in depth on the five main traits that are vital to writing workshop and allowed us to see what role those traits play and why they are important.

            Her explanation of the nature of the writing workshop on page 107, for me, really explained what my role is.  Ray says, “In writing workshops, we both teach how to do something and we nurture the identities that come to be because students are doing this something every day, so we need new ways to think about the content of the curriculum.”  That says to me that there will be times to be the “traditional teacher,” but there will be even more time when we just have to sit back and be ready to facilitate the young writer’s needs as the needs are revealed.  I’m not sure if Ray recorded herself teaching then wrote her examples, or just made the examples based on teaching she has done, but her examples of how she addresses topics as they arise are really great schemes to learn from. 

               The examples are especially helpful in chapter 13 as she explains focus lessons.  I wasn’t really sure what a focus lesson was until reading this chapter.  Now I know that it is such a simple, yet genius thing.  The way Ray subtly brings up topics that need to, or would be helpful address, then leaves the open invitation for children to try it out; it’s almost devious.  She knows what her students need, and then next thing you know the need is being addressed as no big deal.  Then the children need to practice that, but it’s their choice.  So what are they going to do?  Ninety percent of them are going to try it out because it’s just some cool new idea that one writer has shown the others. 

            One more quick thing that I found interesting and contrary to what I thought.  I did think that the focus lessons would be more discussion based.  However, when I found out how Ray does the lessons with just her doing all of the talking most of the time, it made sense to me that it would be more efficient this way and the students would be able to express their ideas where they are suppose to in a writing workshop; in their writing.

The Writing Workshop Ch. 1-5

I do not have much, if any, experience with writing workshops.  I believe most of my experiences with writing class consisted of learning the subject of English.  Our time was spent learning grammar and punctuation through worksheets and “correcting a passage” type activities.  When learning about things like voice, delivery, form, and content, there would be time for independently writing passages with a cut and clear deadline.  There was never a consistent everyday writing time where we were completely free to explore within a genre such as in a writing workshop.  I do not consider myself an active writer because it was something that was never made a part of my day-to-day.  Ray says on page 18 that there are two types of writing people do:  “The write to support their lives (writing to live)” and “They write to communicate ideas to others (composition).”  I certainly write to live on a daily basis, but find no desire for composing on a daily basis or from time-to-time. 

            My meanderings about my lack of writing workshop experience leads me to the things I saw as most vital to a writing workshop and development of children as writers in the first five chapters.  On pages three and four, Ray discusses what the writing workshop is truly about.  And I believe the first step to having anything be productive is knowing what the real purpose of that thing is.  In the case of the writing workshop she states that the child as an individual writer, not finished products, is the focus of the writing workshop.  She then explains that if we are just focusing on the writing process of pumping out works for practice in structure, then “This down-the-line kind of emphasis can be contrasted to a writing workshop where the focus is very much on writers rather than on the process that leads to finished pieces.  Developing the child as a writer is more important than simply developing the writing.

            The other main point that stood out to me was the tone of workshop teaching in chapter four.  What stood out most to me was that the children need to see their teacher as a writer in order to set the tone.  I completely agree that it is vital to the children’s motivation and value they place on writing, to see their teacher as one of them, going through the same successes and struggles.  I feel this is quite important for me to note because I know that it is something I will need to work on.  I do not have too much experience to pull from for my children to see me as a content writer like I will be encouraging them to be.  This leads me to wonder how much I can progress as a content writer before I have my own class where there is a writing workshop.  The more important question is; is being a writer something I can truly come to value in my personal life?  I believe as Ray says on page 47 that “In the best writing workshops I have ever seen, the students can tell you all about their teacher as a writer, and that teacher can tell you all about his or her students as writers too.”  I feel it is important for students to become writers, I just believe I need to start becoming more of a writer myself so we can be in the process together.