Anything, and I mean anything, can be a writing prompt. While waiting for a friend the other day, this Pokestop popped up on my screen. What other amazing things/places are out there in the world I never saw before?

We are writers.

Writing serves my creative mania. In my classroom, historically, we write more than we read. Do I love books? Of course! Am I passionate and excited about passages, excerpts, themes, patterns, characters, and juicy plots? Naturally! But in my experience, if you truly want to a student, a person– to engage, spill their guts, bare their soul and express themselves, writing is it.

Write-It-Right Wednesdays are mini-lesson moments and writing workshop days. Mini lessons are those quick, here is a “thing you need to know” thing. Writing Workshop is a very different animal, and all I’ve learned is from my mentors Holly Stein and Kim Norton through the PSWP (part of the National Writing Project). The Puget Sound Writing Project is no longer, unfortunately, but Holly and Kim began a new venture, PSW Consortium.

Here is Writing Workshop:

You write.
Your students write.
What do you write about? Whatever is on folks’ minds, part of the content, etc. Or what my friend Holly calls “Rule #10: write what you want.”
Use images, news stories, personal anecdotes, objects, postcards, whatever.
Writing is sacred time.
If someone comes in the room to observe during this, they are asked to write, too.
In small groups, each person takes a turn to read their writing. Nothing is in the listeners’ hands. Nothing.
Second read: the listeners give feedback. Never, ever hand your writing over to someone else to read. Yes, it can get noisy. This is not about spelling or editing.
The listeners take a few minutes to verbally give feedback, and hand over the feedback slips to the writer.
The writer says “thank you.” That’s it. They can choose to take the listeners’ advice or not. This is important to teach in terms of preparing writers for criticism and to understand their own craft.

This is Holly’s Power Point. I hope she doesn’t mind me sharing it.

[embeddoc url=”https://blog0rama.edublogs.org/files/2016/07/writing-groups-intro-2adykru.pptx” viewer=”microsoft”]

Writing Partner Feedback Sheet I have a format in Publisher where I put these two up on a page, and double-side photocopy. This document contains the essential information.

[embeddoc url=”https://blog0rama.edublogs.org/files/2016/07/Writing-Partner-Feedback-Sheet-16fq66g.docx” viewer=”microsoft”]

Two Writing Teachers

WriteAbout

For the grammar lessons, I may try to use Grammarly in the classroom.

Here is an example from a student from a memoir unit:

7 feedback — This was from a modeling portion where I wrote the story, and students acted as my writing partner for feedback.

And for heaven’s sake, start a writing blog for your students: http://poetryclub.edublogs.org/

Update: Two Writing Teachers wrote a great piece on Writing Workshop. Read and keep.