Workshop Challenges: Re-teaching versus Coaching

As I’ve implemented a readers-writers workshop approach over the past 18 months, I have noticed a challenge between different sections of my freshmen and sophomore English courses. In my Honors courses, workshop time generally entails brief coaching sessions on the big picture of writing tasks or brief chats on fine-tuning style. Conversely, my standard and inclusive (“Academic,” “college-prep” level) English classes often require more re-teaching or intensive scaffolding. This differentiation between the two types of courses has become more evident the more I get in-tune with my students’ needs and the workings of a workshop.

Coaching in Workshop

For my Honors-level students, workshop provides time for students to delve into their learning, and my Gifted Support co-teacher and I can ask a few clarifying questions, answer a few inquiries, or model sentence construction. For the most part, the students in our Honors courses pick up quickly on new ideas, so I can model combining sentences or show a revision technique, they will ask for further clarification if necessary, I can confirm their understanding, and then I can move onto another student while the first student begins implementing the change. Sometimes these conferences are brief discussions of their books or explorations of what or how they are writing. Many of these conversations are brief once I offer clarification or provide a new tactic.

Reteaching and Scaffolding in Workshop

After a fifteen- to twenty-minute mini-lesson, some of my student in our Academic (college-prep, “regular”) courses require more assistance during independent work time. This may be due to a specific learning disability, consistent absences, a lack of motivation, or challenges with focus. My Special Education co-teacher and I can better reach more students with two of us, but work time with one student may require five or ten minutes. There are plenty of our students in the Academic level who respond similarly to the students in my Honors courses. However, there are enough students who require more reteaching, rephrasing, modeling, or even confidence-building. This results in us getting to fewer students in the same timeframe as an Honors section of a class.

With a co-teacher, one of us can run a small group with students who need additional clarification of a specific task. However, depending on a student’s self-efficacy, some students want us to provide them exactly what to write—even if it is supposed to be on their independent choice reading book.

Providing students scaffolding, developing skills, building confidence, but then stepping away to allow for productive struggle is a challenge for us.

Suggestions

The amount of reteaching and scaffolding needed for some students is a constant time struggle for me in workshop. Utilizing graphic organizers and focusing the day’s mini-lessons are crucial, but we must make tough decisions during workshop time as well as we divide and prioritize our teaching time. Here are some lessons I have learned:

1.     I like touching base with a handful of students who are more independent early in our workshop time so I can direct them to higher-level thinking tasks or answer clarifying questions.

2.     If there are one or two students who I know will be unproductive (due to confusion, absences, attention span, etc.) until I work with them, I will touch base with them first to at least briefly orient them to the task-at-hand. Then I can meet with my students who will only require a couple minutes apiece before returning to those who need more time.

3.     When I have a co-teacher, we can sometimes identify a small group who can work with one of us on the same task while the other bounces from student to student (of those not in the small group).

The challenges between brief coaching sessions and more time-intensive reteaching or scaffolding is not unique to Honors versus Academic courses, of course. These challenges can occur in any workshop setting, but since I teach both “levels,” it has helped formulate my thinking in how I manage my time to best work with my students.