Preschoolers may be novices in the area of writing but, as this article highlights, they are indeed writers. In a year-long ethnography of preschoolers during structured writing time the teacher/researcher explored how students adapted to a writing workshop format. Students participated in daily journal writing and sharing, and weekly conference…

This article describes how one such teacher, Shirley Thacker, developed and implemented a successful writing program in her first grade classroom, which is known as Thackerville. Shirley describes how she motivated a classroom of first-graders to use the writing process in a workshop format and how this approach affected the children's perceptions…

Contends that in order to have a successful writing workshop, teachers need to model writing for their students through interactive writing. Outlines a writing workshop which includes: a drawing stage; guided phonics-based spelling; adult underwriting and individual minilessons; large-group focused minilessons; "minisharing"; and the publication…

A teacher-researcher provides ideas for creating a writer's workshop and encouraging written expression. Suggestions include letting the children create the room arrangement, providing a variety of writing tools, establishing a predictable writing time, becoming partners with students in the writing process, and encouraging students to be active…

Article describes how elementary teachers can create a writing workshop environment that encourages students to write. It discusses how to set the tone and conduct effective conferences. It suggests teachers act as facilitators and listeners and establish workshop procedures. It recommends teachers initially ignore errors and respond to content.…

Discusses the ways in which a high school basic writing teacher abandoned the advice about her students offered by her colleagues and chose instead to develop a student-centered writing workshop. Demonstrates the potential a workshop model has for creating a community of authors in a high school basic writing class. (RS)

Shares the experiences of one teacher who changed her way of teaching high school at-risk students by creating an environment that encouraged students to explore writing and reading topics of their choice. Finds that students changed and learned using the writing-reading workshop approach. (MG)

This video is one of a four-part series which is designed to introduce teachers and parents to standards and teaching in a standards-based environment, and aims to help teachers and parents understand how teaching with standards can change classrooms, work assignments, and student performance. This video focuses on classrooms where the teachers…

This paper examines the teacher's role in elementary and secondary school writing workshops--the teacher as Dostoevskian novelist creates a classroom novel and takes up relations with student-characters. The paper focuses on: the rejection of traditional relations among novelist and character, teacher and student, and the embrace of new ones; how…

Providing personal yet professional guidelines for introducing students to the life of a writer, this book provides a rationale, a set of principles, and some possible methods for using small groups in writing workshops. The book discusses how small groups can provide growing writers with the four essentials which all writers need: time for…

Determining the appropriate amount and type of teacher and student input is a complex curriculum and instructional challenge for writing teachers. This paper describes a teacher-researcher's experiences while teaching a fifth-grade class and studying a developing writer's workshop approach to writing instruction. She investigated: (1) how students…

Designed to help teachers, grade six through high school, overcome misgivings about computers for writing and make the most of the new technology, this book offers answers to an urgent question in language arts: how can computers be woven into the human fabric of a writing workshop? The book is based on a five-year study of computers for writing…