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Emergent Writers' Workshop

Emergent Writers’ Workshop

Writers’ Workshop is a wonderful approach to writing instruction because it gives students many choices and lots of time to practice. Generally, the teacher chooses the genre and the students are allowed to pick their own topic within that genre.

A typical workshop lesson would contain the following pieces:
  • Mini-lesson (short, 5-15 minutes)
  • Independent writing time and conferring with teacher (usually about 30 minutes)
  • Sharing Time (5-10 minutes)

These elements may look a little different in a classroom of emerging writers, especially at first as the students are building up their stamina.

There are specific things you want to look for in the work of emerging writers. These are the students we typically find in our Transitional Kindergarten, Kindergarten and First Grade classrooms.
  • Are they primarily expressing themselves through pictures? If so, is there meaning in the pictures?
  • Can they “read” their writing to you?
  • Are they using what they know about letters to try and spell words?
  • Are they approximating writing by drawing lines/squiggles or random strings of letters?
  • Is their writing phonetically correct?

The important thing to keep in mind is that there are different developmental stages of writing. The goal of each stage is to move onto the next stage. If a student is only drawing squiggles and is not able to explain their meaning to you, the next step would be to teach them that writing always has meaning. They would not yet be ready to add words to their writing.
However, if a student is writing random strings of letters, the next step might be teaching them how to stretch out words and write the sounds they hear using the alphabet chart. It really helps to focus on teaching them one thing at a time.

Emergent writers are able to write in all sorts of genres. We have found that having students write stories for their classmates to act out is a very powerful way of getting them to add more details to their story.

If you are interested in learning more about emerging writers and a  Writers’ Workshop Unit of Study on writing stories for others to act out, please attend our STEP Committee workshop at the DKG California Convention on May 4, 2019 from 8:30-10:30.

Also, check out our Writers’ Workshop Pinterest Board here:

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