Writing a Workshop Curriculum

On January 18^th, we begin a new semester at school, and since we are on an intensified block schedule, I gain three new groups of students. That means I need to implement reading-writing workshop from Day 1. I have two different courses: a co-taught Academic (college-prep) English 10 inclusion class (with students I had last year in English 9), and two sections of Honors English 9 (where a Gifted Support teacher will join me about two days each week for the first time in my career).

Below are the steps I will take to plan my classroom to best support a workshop model where students are given time to read books of their choice and write in class so I can serve as a learning coach. The following weeks of my blog will detail one of these aspects:

1.      Prioritize standards/objective/targets for each Unit on what skills must be demonstrated to proficiency (as opposed to just explored/introduced). We just revised our curriculum, so these are already nicely outlined. However, as we all know in English Language Arts, there are too many standards. My first goal will be to identify the skills I know students must be able to demonstrate (mostly through writing tasks) and prioritize them while also touching on the other standards in my mini-lessons at least once.

2.      Rewrite learning targets based on those standards in student-friendly language to guide assessments and mini-lessons. Each of my assignments will then be explicitly linked to at least one learning target. I want students to write achievement goals for themselves each day, as well as e-mail parents/coaches/advisors on a weekly basis, so having targets to refer to their progress will help. We will be able to discuss during conferences which targets they are currently working on or how they are progressing on each one.

3.      Design assessments (mostly writing assignments) for each learning target. In my workshops so far, I have established writing assessments for a two- or three-week span and then set my students to work, which gave me time to conference or touch base. At the start of the course, I may not be able to assign everything at once, as I will be introducing/reviewing literary elements and other concepts. Since I began workshops late into my tenth grade class this past semester, the basics of analysis and writing were already established. I will need to determine how many assessments of the unit to provide up front for my new groups. Many of the assessments will be short paragraph (or so) responses to their independent reading books, but there will also be one extended writing piece per unit, which they may begin working on from the start.

4.      Plan mini-lessons for the unit. I have come to learn that these mini-lessons allow for great flexibility to meet the needs of students. For example, after a test, I was able to provide a mini-lessons on specific concepts. Or, after working the room the day before and working on writing, I knew I needed another mini-lesson on strengthening claims/thesis statements. Some of these mini-lessons may be a bit longer earlier in the semester: I have learned I must leave myself some flexibility here, but I will often work to limit my time lecturing or doing a full-group activity.

a.       For the start of the semester, however, I know I will need to transform my former, longer lesson plans to shorter lectures (no more than twenty minutes) as I re-introduce and expand on setting, characterization, conflict and so on. I think having a plan for the first couple weeks will be necessary before I begin to be more flexible and response to specific needs I notice from workshopping. As I have been teaching these two courses for the past decade (and led our recent curriculum revision), my comfort level with the content will come in handy.

b.      These lessons will also include a mentor text. For my Honors 9 class, I will use Lord of the Flies (which I had formerly used as a whole-class novel). My Academic 10 class will utilize Of Mice and Men. I will use these texts to model close reading and my own personal responses to literature and then ask students to analyze those aspects (characterization, tone, setting, etc.) from their independent novel. Hopefully some of my students will choose to pick up these “classic” texts.

5.      Determine reporting procedures for conferences and progress. I want students to e-mail home each week with their progress. I also want to use Google Drive to document the content of our conferences (so students and I can reference what they have been working on); this may or may not be the same as their daily classroom goals. I need to begin requiring daily outside-of-class reading; I have too many students this semester who have been on one shorter novel for over a month. I have gamified my class in the past (XP for completed formative homework with a rise in rank and attainment of items), and I may use this to report reading progress outside of class (whether at home or during our daily tutorial period). These need to be established right off the bat, and I have already begun these considerations before steps 1-4.

Please drop me a note with questions or insights, or continue the conversation on Twitter!

My progress on shifting to a reading-writing workshop model has been inspired by many sources: various presentations from the NCTE and CEL (@ncte and @ncte_cel) annual conventions the past two years, Penny Kittle (@pennykittle), Kelly Gallagher (@KellyGToGo), Catlin Tucker (@Catlin_Tucker), Berit Gordon (@beritgordon), Aric Foster (@Aricfoster2), Andrew Easton (@EastonA1), and many other impressive educators. Check them out!