Response to WW Ch. 10 & 16 and Critical Literacy

While I understand the power of sharing your writing and receiving feedback from peers, I have had terrible experiences with sharing my work with classmates in the past. When I decided that I wanted to be a teacher, I also decided that I would never force my students to share their work with the class. I know that as a teacher of 30 or so students, I will never understand everything that is going on in my classroom. I know that there will be name-calling and teasing that I am not aware of, and this was a point that was reinforced in the chapter from Critical Literacy and Writer's Workshop. I know that sometimes knowing that you will be sharing your work changes the content of your writing. Instead of writing about something that is truly meaningful to them, students may choose to write about a more comfortable topic, rather than be criticized. While I agree that sharing is good in the writing workshop, I don't think that it should be forced by any means. If students choose not to share their work with the class, teachers need to trust that they have a reason not to want to share.

Chapter 10 in The Writing Workshop focuses on the actual content to be taught in the workshop. Writing workshop time should focus on grammar and conventions as well as teaching students to think and behave like writers. Teachers should encourage their students to find techniques and strategies that work well for them. Students should also learn to question themselves and their writing so that they are constantly growing. Chapter 16 focuses on planning for the writing workshop. For me, this is definitely scary. Coming up with a formal lesson plan for a time of the day that is full of so many unknowns is intimidating to say the least. Planning for a writing workshop has to be very extensive, and it includes setting out goals for your students, planning a space for them to accomplish those goals, and choosing units of study that will bring them closer to their goals before beginning daily lesson planning. The focus lesson plan is really the only part of the planning process that follows a traditional lesson plan format, because this is the only time during the writing workshop in which you are doing formal, stand-at-the-front-of-the-class-and-teach teaching. The rest of the time is dedicated to working with individual students on what they need that day and allowing students to share their work with the class. While I definitely think that planning for the writing workshop will be difficult my first year of teaching, I know that it is something that I will get more comfortable with over time.