In their book Teaching Language and Literacy: Preschool Through the Elementary Grades (5^th ed.), Christie, Enz, Vukelich, & Roskos (2014) promote teaching writing to elementary school students with a workshop structure. Teachers should allow 45-60 minutes per day for the writing workshop block and classrooms should be arranged to provide spaces for students to work on their writing independently, with partners or in small groups. This structure consists of an initial mini-lesson, then time for students to write while the teacher conducts individual student conferences, and finally a sharing time in which students read aloud a portion of one of their writing pieces for the whole class or a small group of peers.

Mini-lessons: The initial mini-lesson, also referred to as a focus lesson, is short and concise, lasting approximately 10 minutes. At the beginning of the year, these lessons teach students the structure of writing workshop and include topics such as peer conferencing, teacher-student conferencing, and classroom procedures for editing, proofreading, and publishing. Students are taught expectations for each of these situations including the type of support they will be offered by the teacher and their peers. After students understand the structure of the writing workshop and routines are in place, focus lessons should provide explicit instruction in three areas: qualities of writing, steps of the writing process and conventions of language.

• Qualities of writing—Instruction should include setting a purpose to write, the characteristics of different genres, and how to analyze mentor texts for craft moves that students can mimic in their own writing
• Writing Process—Students should be taught that the writing process is ongoing. Although, there are specific steps to writing (prewrite, draft, revise, edit, publish), authors move back and forth within the writing process steps frequently as they reflect on what they’ve written and revise to improve it.
• Conventions of language—Teachers should provide instruction about “punctuation, grammar, usage, handwriting, capitalization, and spelling”. (p.323) State and district standards should be used as reference to identify which skills should be included in these lessons.

In addition to using state and district standards as a guide, the students’ writing itself should drive classroom instruction. Teachers should use data they collect from ongoing assessments of students’ writing during the year to determine what type of focus lessons are needed and adjust instruction accordingly.

Writing Time and Student Conferences: The bulk of the time in a writing workshop is allotted for students to write. During this time, each student works on what he needs so students will be doing a variety of activities within the writing process steps. For example, a few students may be working independently to generate topics for a new writing piece, some might be studying mentor texts to analyze the author’s craft and apply it to their writing, and others may be collaborating together on revising their pieces. While students are writing, the teacher conducts conferences with individual students to provide differentiated instruction. Christie, et al. suggest the following outline for teacher-student conferences:

• Writer’s Intent: Initially, the teacher asks the student what he is working on to research his intent or direction in order to determine the writer’s goal and plan instruction during the conference.
• Writer’s Need: The next step involves asking the student a few guiding questions to direct the conversation in a way that will help the student improve as a writer. The teacher needs to determine one or two aspects of the student’s writing ability to focus her instruction on for this specific conference.
• Teach the Writer: During the teaching step, the teacher provides instruction to the student by showing him a mentor text that will help him improve in the specific area identified, referring him back to previous writings, letting the writer know something is confusing or missing, or perhaps asking questions to assist the writer in self-reflection. This teaching piece is very brief and should not be presented lecture-style, but delivered through conversation.
• Writer’s Plan: In this last step, the teacher asks the student to articulate a plan, or what his next steps will be as a writer. The teacher may need to provide a sentence starter such as, “Now you’re going to…..” and wait for the student to respond.

Tracking teacher-student conferences by taking a few notes about the writer’s need, what instruction was provided and the writer’s next steps is beneficial. The teacher can use these notes to ensure she meets with all students regularly and to determine if the students are showing growth by following through with their stated plans as well as determining what focus lessons are needed by the majority of the class.

Sharing: The last 10-15 minutes of a writing workshop period consists of a group share time. Here are the different types of share sessions Christie, et al. presented in Chapter 10:

• Share meeting—students share drafts while the teacher and students ask questions, some students may share specific strategies they’ve recently learned or tried in their writing
• Writer’s circle—the class is divided into small groups and sharing is conducted within each small group at the same time which allows for more students to share in a small amount of time
• Quiet share—students bring writing utensils and paper to the share time so they can write down questions or comments as the writers share their pieces (papers are given to the writer to review later)
• Focused share—the teacher asks students to read a specific component of their writing piece such a their lead, their closing, or an example of descriptive language
• Process share—students are asked to bring an example of a revision they made and explain their thinking about why they made the change
• Celebration share—students share completed writing pieces as a celebration of their hard work

Some examples of what students might share are graphic organizers or lists in which they’ve generated writing topics and ideas, drafts they’ve started to show specific components of their writing such as sensory language or to ask for revision suggestions, particular phrases, sentences or paragraphs in which they’ve imitated a mentor author, or possibly a completed writing piece that is ready for publishing.

Teaching Mechanical Skills

 In Chapter 11, Christie, Enz, Vukelich, & Roskos (2014) suggest that even though students receive instruction for mechanical skills of writing such as spelling, grammar, capitalization, punctuation and handwriting through using editing checklists and teacher-student conferencing during writing workshop, these activities may not be enough. Explicit instruction is needed to strengthen mechanical skills for students to be successful writers.

Teachers should make spelling instruction a priority because spelling specialists believe that student exposure and exploration through writing is not enough (p.334).  Since students in the same classroom are on various levels, spelling instruction should be individualized. Teachers and students work together to select words that need to be practiced each week using the students’ recent writing as a guide. According to Shane Templeton and Darryl Morris (1999), the selected words should be “known as sight words” (p.336), should be words that students will use frequently, and at the primary level, the words should follow a consistent spelling pattern.  Since the class doesn’t have one spelling list for all students, the teacher is not able to administer weekly pre-tests and post-tests. Students will work cooperatively in pairs to complete the tests as well as studying together daily throughout the week.

When considering grammar instruction, teachers should be aware that research shows teaching the rules of grammar in isolation through drilling practices is not effective because students don’t make the connection between the worksheet practice activities and their own writing. (Hillocks, 1986) Students should be taught grammar through the use of authentic writing—mentor texts, teacher modeling, and students’ own writing pieces. Teachers should also help students understand that the structure of written language, just like spoken language, varies depending on setting, purpose, and audience. “For example, the grammatical structures used in writing a letter for publication in a newspaper are different from those used to write a letter to a grandmother.” (p.339) Punctuation and capitalization instruction should also be implemented through using mentor texts and students’ writing pieces. Teachers can instruct students editing skills through the use of checklists and modeling editing marks.

To support EL learners in the area of mechanical skills, teachers must provide a multitude of opportunities for structured conversations with their native speaking peers. Development of oral language in context will increase their understanding and use of the structures of grammar. Teacher modeling is also vital for ELLs in addition to giving students daily opportunities to write about topics of interest to them, experiences that are “in their wheelhouse” so to speak. Detailed feedback about their writing will assist ELLs with grasping the correct usage in English for grammar, punctuation and capitalization.

Reference:

Christie, Enz, Vukelich, & Roskos (2014). Teaching Language and Literacy Preschool Through the Elementary Grades (5^th ed.).