Impact on Students

Creating Writer's Workshops across the K-8 spectrum has allowed us to directly teach the writing process. This has had a powerful impact on students independence, and engagement during writing time. Once they can autonomously manage their writing process they are free to create work that reflects their interests and experiences independently.

We now begin the year teaching our students different strategies for collecting ideas. They create heart maps, list topics of interests, and journal about things that interest them. We then build their repertoire of planning strategies. We teach kids that once they plan they should start drafting up a storm all the while revising as they reconsider their work. We then teach kids that when writers have work they are happy with in terms of the ideas presented, they should move to editing to make their reading more clear for readers by checking things such as grammar and spelling. There are variations depending on the age of the students, but the goal for all ages is as much independence as possible. This teaching of the process sets kids up for independence for the remaining units of the year regardless of genre.  

After each unit students publish and celebrate the work they have done throughout the study. Much of the funds and thinking of our grant have been devoted to developing our student's ability to present their work in a variety of media formats including writing, picture, podcasts, and video. This allows for a greater degree of artistic expression as well as giving students the experience necessary for work and life in the twenty-first century. 

As a result of their hard work over the past two years each student at our school has produced at least one personal narrative and one nonfiction piece that reflects their interests. Many students throughout the school have also produced work in various other genres including biography, realistic fiction, persuasive letter writing, personal essay, and research projects.