Chapter 2: Writing Workshop

Implementing the writing process through writing workshop is impressive. "[It] is an interdisciplinary writing technique which can build students' fluency in writing through continuous, repeated exposure to the process of writing" (http://www.teachersfirst.com). Teachers use writing workshops to intoduce the writing process and share the results. Students work in authentic ways and finally will be independent writer. During the workshop, students work independently on different writing stages so monitoring is an important way to figure out and help students. "Status of the class", "conferencing"and "keeping project checklists" are ways of monitoring students. Teachers should remember that for students, "learning the writing process is far more important than the quality of [the] project" (Tompkins, 2008, p. 50).

As Sunmi quoted in her blog, teachers' role is to facilitate not to interfere to teach or fix. In this sense, writing workshop seems a very practical and helpful tool in class. It could be a little chaotic or messy at first for an inexperienced teacher in this approach or method. Time and hands-on experiences will teach to be a capable classroom manager.

Chapter 1: Teaching Children to Write

The vignette in the chapter gives me a clearer picture what writing teaching looks like and how it can be managed. "Classroom teachers as well as writing researchers have discovered that even young children communicate through writing and that they begin writing as they are learning to read or even before they read (Graves, 1994)" (p. 5). I have thought writing teaching could not be done in the beginners' class and it isn't possible until they finish basic letters, words, sentence structures. I noticed that I have a different concept what teaching writing is about while reading a textbook and an article (http://math-and-reading-help-for-kids.org/articles/Tips_for_teaching_kids_how_to_write.html). It means children are using writing for communication so it can mean words, making cards or picture books with simple words not writing a story or an essay. Chapter one introduces five key features of the writing process: prewriting, drafting, revising, editing, and publishing; and five levels of support: modeled writing, shared writing, interactive writingg, guided writing, and independent writing.

As Sunmi said, teaching writing process explicitly will equip students with self-monitoring, or self-regulated writing conventions. With skills and strategies learnt from process-stressed lessons, students will organize, revise, edit, and publish while examining each process like capable writers do. Teachers' role will be giving time and opportunities to experience those steps to students and could model for students, hopefully.