Meaningful Writer’s Workshop!

One of my all time favorite things to teach is Writer’s Work-shop. We just started Lucy Calkins unit of study on Monday. I have been all over the place with Writer’s Work-shop since I started teaching. I have changed to many different Writer’s Work-shops and you just can’t beat these units of study. Yes, they are wordy and you have to study them a little. The benefits of it are so worth it. You and the students understand why you are doing what you are doing. The way it follows such an out-lined map of lessons is perfect. There are a lot of watered down versions of it and I just have to go back to the real stuff.

Even with all of the versions that are close, there is just nothing as good as this set.

Now, writing folders are an ordeal. There is no Lucy Calkins to save you on the folders. She like to let them have papers but you know that turns in to a disaster in a hot minute. We keep all of our writing paper in our writing folders.

I also have to the kiddos complete a project at home that stays in their folder all year. It helps with the “I have nothing to write about” syndrome. Click the picture of it to grab a copy. I left a blank so you can write in your own due date if you are wanting to have your students do it with their parents. You can always do it at school if you don’t think it will make its way back 🙂

This is something that my entire team does and we have done it ever since I have taught K. I just slip it in a page protector and it’s the first thing that they see when they open up their writing folder.

These are the pages that I use for the year of writing and how it usually progresses. Our students do well with lines but sometimes just blank paper is more appropriate than having lines. Of course, you can click both pages to grab the writing page that you think would work best for your kiddos.

I like giving them the check after we have learned about “Easy To Read Writing”. It gives them some ownership to make sure that once they finish their writing piece, they can check their writing themselves to assess if it’s readable. I always have them read their writing back to me or share it in front of the class if they are confident in doing that.

I made our first anchor chart this week that goes with the second lesson in Lucy’s first book:

A few books I love to read during Writer’s Workshop are: