Writer's Workshop has been a bit of a pain. It was suggested that I have students finish something they have already written. That suggestion was to go before I start All-About books. I decided to give it the ol' college try, believing that we could pick one of our "starts" and work through the process of drafting and editing until we had a finished project. My prediction was 1 week, tops!
Oh how wrong I was! Some didn't have starts (my fault for not checking), and most acted like they had never written anything in their lives! The latter comment I am not surprised by as it followed the pattern of lack of stamina that I noticed in our Reader's Workshop. Writing has been difficult to say the least.
But we are still going, a week after starting this (now in the midst of week 2). What I decided, and I am shocked I didn't determine this before, was that I needed to change the notion of publication. Publication, to them, has been a piece of writing with words on it- nothing more and nothing less. The idea of editing is... non-existent. So I decided that we were going to write it for our outside bulletin board... and we were going to record... oh, not with the tape recorder! We are going to make it into a Photostory project. Tech/Computers + Kids = Enthralled. The paradigm changes a bit... and is a bit more successful.
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