Invitation By Shel Silverstein If you are a

Invitation By: Shel Silverstein If you are a dreamer, come in If you are a dreamer, a wisher, a liar, A hope-er, a prayer, a magic bean buyer. . . If you’re a pretender, come sit by my fire For we have some flax-golden tales to spin. Come In!

Writing Workshop Overview The Essential Parts Packet – S 2

The Structure 4 – 5 Times/Week 45 – 60 minutes Focus Lesson 5 -15 minutes Work Time 30 – 45 minutes Sharing Time 5 – 15 minutes Focus Lesson Sharing Time Work Time

Focus Lesson (Direct Instruction) Short instruction on one aspect of writing Process Craft Conventions Explicit Instruction Usually in a meeting area Establishes a writer to writer relationship

Work Time Quiet Writing Time Everyone is writing Students could be trying out the lesson Music

Work Time Teacher is conferring Students are acting as writers

Share Time Develops a Community of Writers Provides an Audience Develops Communication Skills Different Kinds

Observation & Experience The writing process approach requires a radically different pace than we are used to in our schools. ~Lucy Calkins (The Art of Teaching Writing)

Packet – R 2 The writing process approach requires a radically different pace than we are used to in our schools. But time is our scarcest resource. Teachers often ask me, “How do I squeeze writing in on top of everything else? ” My suggestion is simple: Don’t. Instead of shoehorning one more thing into the crowded curriculum, I suggest that we each take a good, hard look at our school day to determine what is not longer needed there. My husband & I recently moved from one Connecticut town to another, and the thing that surprised me most about the move was the amount of junk we had accumulated. We took fifteen carloads of trash to the dump. Sometimes I think that if we, as teachers, want to move on, we need to take carloads of curricula to the dump. It is only by cleaning out some old things that we can give time and space to new ones. ~Lucy Calkins