The goal of Writer's Workshop: Is to cover the Ontario Curriuculm Big Ideas for writing. Writer's Workshop in our grade 3 class is a time designated to specifically teach and allow students to experience writing with different text structures and genres. At the beginning of the year, our Writer's Workshop really focus specifically on purpose, form, audience and topics (for a full explaination of this please watch the video posted below). At this point of the year we are looking at different texts and genres of writing and how writer's purpose, form, audience and topic are reflected in their work.
Writer's Workshop Structure:
Writer's Workshop is broken up into 2 periods:
First Period: Learning
This period is typically a mini-lesson where we explore and analyze different texts and genres of writing. During this time we create writing criterias for each text form we are studying.
Second Period: Writing
Is the writing time! Students choose to work independently or with a partner to generate their own examples of different writing texts/genres. This work includes 3 phases: rough drafts, editing, and publishing. Once published students can display their work on the writer's writing wall.
Grade 3 Curriculum: Big Ideas (for writing)
1. Generate, gather, and organize ideas and information to write for an intended purpose and audience
2. Draft and revise their writing, using a variety of informational, literary, and graphic forms and stylistic elements appropriate for the purpose and audience
3. Use editing, proofreading, and publishing skills and strategies, and knowledge of language conventions, to correct errors, refine expression, and present their work effectively
4. Reflect on and identify their strengths as writers, areas for improvement, and the strategies they found most helpful at different stages in the writing process
More on Writer's Workshop:
There are many different approaches to writer's workshop. The Balanced Literacy Diet website has many different examples of educators of various grades implementing writer's workshop in their literacy program (see video below and visit www.litdiet.org).