Suffering the Silence: One Teacher's Experience Working with Writers Workshop

writing education;writers wokshop;high school;assessment;School of Education and Human Services: Education

Edgar, Rebecca S.Flint ;

University of Michigan

关键词: writing education;    writers wokshop;    high school;    assessment;    School of Education and Human Services: Education;   

Others  :  https://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/handle/2027.42/118027/Edgar.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y

瑞士|英语

来源: The Illinois Digital Environment for Access to Learning and Scholarship

【 摘 要 】

Writers Workshop is a method of teaching in which the students are allowed freedom of choice within their writing. The classroom environment supports and nurtures the students throughout the writing process because the students are the center of instruction, not the curriculum. The Writers Wokshop is based on the following basic principles that guide writing instruction: Students need to write at least four times per week, for at least half an hour, within the classroom; students need to have choice in thei writing; teachers need to write with their students to establish a writing community; mini-lessons should br used to teach conventions, usages, the roles of writing, etc.; effective recordkeeping must be used to establish accountability for the students; writiers need time to read other writers work, both professional authors and peer work. The teacher is responsible for establishing a community-of-writers atmosphere within the classroom by establishing procedures and policies based on the Writers Workshop teaching principles. The students are expected to take responsibility for their behavior and effort within the classroom as well as their writing in order to grow and progress as writers.

A Writers Workshop that was established within a tenth grade English classroom at Flint Central High School was not as productive as the teacher expected. Through the use of classroom observation, not taking, journaling, and student interviews the teacher discovered that the current practices within the classroom were actually having ad adverse effect on the writing environment. The students were not behaving or thinking like writers simply because the instructor failed to make students responsible for their own work and progess as writers within the workshop. The recordkeeping system within the workshop was non-existant because the instructor did not hold the students accountable for using the records. This discovey has helped the teacher understand and establish a more proficient Writers Workshop within the classroom by instituting a more effective recordkeeping system for the students to use and maintain.