05 October 2008
writer' workshop
When I was in my field experience. I observed a kindergarten classroom doing writer's workshop. I just did not see the purpose in starting writer's workshop so early in the school year when they are still learning to write their letters of the alphabet. The teacher had words written on the board that they could use but they did not recognize them because they cant read yet. Although I think it is important for children to express their thoughts, I don't believe the children were ready to do this without proper instruction. I think the writer's workshop should have more directions.
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I just wanted to tell everyone about the suggestion I made to Nick after class last Monday. I was wondering if you guys think that the following suggestion would be helpful in making you all feel more comfortable sharing and commenting during writer's workshop. My suggestion is that we could write for 20 minutes, like usual, but then we could switch our writing with one other person and that person could read it and give us positive feedback. I think that I would be more comfortable sharing my writing with the class if at least one other person had read it first and given me positive feedback on it. Do you guys like this idea or not? Don't worry, you won't hurt my feelings! Haha See you Monday :)
Brooke I think this is a great idea. I think one person doing a quick proofread on a piece is a great idea if it will make people feel more comfortable with reading aloud. However, I do not want this to take away from the rawness of the pieces..I have enjoyed how thrown together and random that some of the papers have been sounding. For this reason, I think just one proofreader is good enough. That is a great suggestion.
Brooke, I agree. I think that having someone else's reassurance on our piece would really boost confidence in our own work. I think that is a great idea, and I also think that would be a great idea in our future classrooms as well! That is a great suggestion!
I agree with Brooke's idea about Writer's workshop. I feel that people might feel more comfortable after someone else reads their writing. I know for myself I am not confident enough with my writing to read it in front of the class, so I think that is a great idea!
I was talking with my friend Clara about this over the weekend and she was telling me about how important it was for her kindies to engage in writing activities even if they don't know how to write "properly." They are learning the form of writing. They are beginning to understand the ways of writing. Even more importantly, they begin to view themselves as writers from the very beginning.
I was also in that kindergarten class that day during writers workshop. I thought it was really neat to watch the kids try to figure out how to spell words by the sounds the letters made. It took me back to my kindergarten days but I had a hard time helping them since I didn't know all of the hand gestures they did. I thought the writers workshop was pretty productive, but I noticed it was hard to keep the kindergartens on track with the task at hand.
Today, we had another writer's workshop in my kidnergarten class. It went alot better today because the teacher choose the topic the kids wrote about. This was more structured. It was great to see how children sound out words. Totally different experience today maybe because the main teacher was teaching instead of a student teacher.
Sam/Lily I think your observation is really interesting! I don't really remember when I started writers workshop but I know I wasn't writing well enough in Kindergarten to articulate much.
It will be interesting as we become teachers to see how the standards we have for students have changed since we were young.
I thought that switching and sharing worked very well last class because there was more involvement and participation. I think that more of us felt comfortable sharing and it was a lot better to get feedback about our writing even if we didn't share. If we keep this up we might be able to get everyone to share their writing before the end of the semester which I think is a realistic goal for our class.
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