Professional Development

As teachers we knew we needed to push our thinking about writing instruction and expose ourselves to more meaningful instruction. The writing workshop structure appealed to us because it valued students as constructors of their own writing and would foster the type of storytelling we hoped students could create. Unfortunately, we didn't know enough about this type of instruction to implement it in our classrooms. We needed professional development! So, we applied and planned a trip to attend a week-long writing institute at Columbia University's Teacher's College Writing Project. 

Traveling to New York and learning from the best writing researchers was an indescribable leap in our professional development. We felt like new invigorated teachers and wanted to continue the intellectual stimulation. We decided to reach out to The Writing Project Center X and learn more about Project Based Learning. We felt this would strengthen our workshop training by being able to create meaningful purposes and audiences for our students as they worked through genre-based workshops. A presenter from the Center X not only deepened the knowledge of TIIP members, but led a series of workshops for our whole school. Every grade level team chose a unit they wanted to explicitly plan using Project Based Learning as the framework.

Planning

Teachers used what they learned from both of these developments to collaborate and plan strategic writing units. Teachers learned the importance of planning bends in the road or goals for the unit and then planning daily teaching points. Teachers at each grade level met at least twice per week with the resource teacher to plan units. At the end of our first year, every grade level had at least 6 genre-based unit plans all crafted and designed by grade level teams. These units in the second year were fine tuned and adapted to meet the needs of the current students in the classroom. 

Approach

The impact of our learning is visible as you step in each classroom. Whether it's the language on the walls, the students hard at work, the published books in our library,  or the teacher delivering a minilesson, conferring one-on-one or conducting small groups, it is clear the culture has been altered. Here you can visit one of our classrooms to see how we typically begin each Writer's Workshop.

Using writing workshop in our classrooms hasn't just affected the TIIP members classroom, students in every classroom across our school are now part of writing workshops. A transformation within our school has occurred and we finally have a unified vision and approach to teaching writing. Most importantly, our students have a meaningful approach to writing that values their strengths and weaknesses as writers and as individual community members.