Creating a Homeschool Writing Workshop – Post #1
For the past six months, I’ve been alluding to the fact that we have really changed the way we approach writing. Part of me has been wanting to write a post for ages, but I just wasn’t quite sure where to start. Time to jump in!
First, a little background. LD has always been a reluctant writer. When he was K-1, we worked a lot on handwriting and copywork. We also did some narration, but he was very reluctant to write much. We dabbled with some well known (homeschool) writing curriculums, writing prompts, but none of that really worked. I’d still hear, “I don’t know what to write. It’s too hard. I can’t think of anything.” We found a spelling program (called All About Spelling), that really helped. We’ve also done a fair bit with writing mechanics, grammar and things like that. But, we still hadn’t found our groove with writing itself.
The change in our approach all started when I read No More “I’m Done” Fostering Independent Writers in the Primary Grades (affiliate link) by Jennifer Jacobson. The opening described a classroom writing scene. Students were given a writing prompt… “Describe your pet” … Jacobson then described the chaos that ensued. Someone didn’t have a pet. Someone wondered if they could write about a pet they wished they had. Someone couldn’t find a pencil. It took a long time to settle in. They wrote the minimum and then there was a chorus of “I’m done!!” I had honestly been there in our homeschool writing… the whining of not having any clue what to write… taking 10 minutes to drag themselves across the room to find a pencil…
Then Jacobson went on to describe a workshop model… starting with a mini-lesson and then moving on to writing time where the students reread yesterday’s writing, made additions and corrections or added more material or began writing a new piece. The kids picked up where they had left off the day before and the entire class wasn’t doing the exact same thing.
“AH-HAH!” I shouted in my head. This is what I need… especially since I have such diverse ages. I have a 5 year old that is just barely learning to write. A 7 year old that loves to write. And a 10 year old that doesn’t like writing and is struggling to find his own voice. It sounded GREAT! Tell me more!!
So, I reached out to learn from other experts in the field… veteran writing teachers who had been in the classroom for years! Thank goodness they’ve shared their expertise with all of us!!! I have spent the past six months reading (and reading and reading) and learning from those teachers — Jennifer Jacobson, Ruth Culham, Melissa Forney, Barbara Mariconda and others.
Now, some of you may have heard all this as common knowledge, but I hadn’t heard of many of these ideas/techniques for teaching writing before…
The 6+1 writing traits…
The six writing traits were developed by some classroom teachers who looked at the skills students need to learn and improve upon as they learned to write. These are some of the characteristics of writing and they provide a framework for assessing and teaching about writing. What are they?
- Ideas
- Organization
- Word Choice
- Voice
- Sentence Fluency
- Conventions
- Presentation
Why are the 6+1 Traits useful? Well, you can touch upon mini-lessons… and then encourage the kids to incorporate that into their current writing project. That in combination with using “mentor texts” in our writing workshop time has provided the framework for our writing time.
I have so much more to write, but will have to save that for another post!
Do you want to learn more about starting your own Homeschool Writing Workshop? Here are some related posts:
- Creating a Homeschool Writing Workshop – Post #2: Creating a Writing Workshop Area and Materials to Have on Hand
- Creating a Writing Workshop Post #3: This post is about Mini-Lessons during writing time, mentor texts and includes reviews of 8 or 9 writing books that you might find helpful.
- Writing Resource Pack: This is a post about the 30-page pack I made for our writing workshop. Reference pages on the 6 +1 Wri ting Traits, Mini-Lessons, the types of writing, creating a powerful beginning, techniques for ending a story/paper, and so forth. (These writing resources are free to download.)
- Writing Workshop: Dr. Seuss Style: The kids and I had fun writing in the style of Dr. Seuss!
- Biography Research Paper Resource Pack
- Practical Pointers for Working with a Reluctant Writer (or any Writer)
- Writing Activity to Spark Kids’ Imagination!
- 40 Journal Writing Prompts (Free Printable)
- Animal Portfolio Project: writing, art and geography activities that go with any animals… With many activities to choose from. Writing activities include both fiction and non-fiction suggestions such as
- Write a speech or a letter to the president on why your animal needs protection in the wild.
- Menu: Create a humorous menu at a restaurant where your animals would like to eat.
- WWII Portfolio Project
- Writing Workshop: What We’re Doing for Writing this Fall
- Writing Workshop Rules! Why the Writing Workshop continues to work so well in our homeschool.
- Writing Workshop Discussion Questions: Last spring I had the kids think about some fundamental questions about writing and we had a wonderful discussion about writing in general. We went over lots of literary terms like similes, onomatopoeia, allusion, idioms… I go into more detail at that blog post and you can grab the free printable there:
Mini-Lessons to Use in a Writing Workshop:
- What makes a good book or story?
- Make your story come alive with details and description.
- Creating Interesting Characters
- Story Openings: Set the mood or feeling of your story
- Gathering story ideas from your own life
- Alliteration and more
- MiniLesson – Describing in Detai- – Additing Details Exercise – Fun Activity!(Don’t miss this one, the kids LOVED this activity!!)
- Writing Workshop: Conflict in Literature (Man vs. Man, Man vs. Self, etc)
- Writing Workshop Mini-Lesson: Rules for Writing and the Story Writing Process
- Writing Workshop Mini-Lesson: Rules for Writing and the Story Writing Process — Have your kids read the Plot Chicken? We started our Writing Workshop this year off with this book. What a great buk, buk!! In fact, I liked it so much that I created a chicken writing rules printable to go along with the book!
See you again soon here or Homeschool Den Facebook page. Don’t forget to Subscribe to our Homeschool Den Newsletter! ~Liesl
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[…] writing resource books — I also have a whole bunch of new resource materials that I keep on hand and refer to or re-read pretty often. Again, there’s so much to say about those that I will save that for another post. So there we go… I think I’ve said about as much as there is to say about creating our homeschool writing workshop space and gathering the materials we need each day. The last thing to add is that this has made a HUGE difference to the way writing goes. Once we enter that space, we all know it’s writing time and somehow we center down and get to the task at hand. The next post will talk a bit more about the actual rhythm of our writing workshop… what we do each day… and what some of the mini-lessons entail. And, I promise there’ll be a post about the writing resource books I have read (and recommend) and also a post to share the various writing workshop materials I made (a packet of 25 pages or so). So, it looks like there are at least 3 or 4 more posts to come in this series! Don’t Miss the Previous Post in this Series: Creating a Homeschool Writing Workshop – Post #1 — How/Why we needed a change in our wri… […]
[…] In the first post in this series, I explained how we had dabbled in writing, but had never found a “program” or curriculum that worked well for us. I found some expert advice from primary classroom teachers, though, and set about creating a workshop that works for our family. I learned about the 6+1 writing traits (the basic qualities that make writing work) and about using mini-lessons to cover some of the basic writing characteristics (which include: ideas, organization, word choice, voice, sentence fluency, conventions and presentation). I read through a lot of books written by experienced teachers who shared some of the Mini-Lessons and writing ideas that worked for them in the classroom. […]
[…] In the first post in this series, I explained how we had dabbled in writing, but had never found a “program” or curriculum that worked well for us. I found some expert advice from primary classroom teachers, though, and set about creating a workshop that works for our family. I learned about the 6+1 writing traits (the basic qualities that make writing work) and about using mini-lessons to cover some of the basic writing characteristics (which include: ideas, organization, word choice, voice, sentence fluency, conventions and presentation). I read through a lot of books written by experienced teachers who shared some of the Mini-Lessons and writing ideas that worked for them in the classroom. […]
[…] Creating a Homeschool Writing Workshop — Post #1: How and Why We Got Started with a Workshop Model. […]
[…] Creating a Homeschool Writing Workshop — Post #1: How and Why We Got Started with a Workshop Model. […]
[…] LD jumped right in to writing this week… not a complaint or a groan. 🙂 This is a big step forward even from the beginning of the year. The writing workshop model works SO well for us now!! (If you want to read more about that you can read my series: Creating a Writing Workshop.) […]
[…] LD jumped right in to writing this week… not a complaint or a groan. 🙂 This is a big step forward even from the beginning of the year. The writing workshop model works SO well for us now!! (If you want to read more about that you can read my series: Creating a Writing Workshop.) […]
[…] can read this series on Creating a Writing Workshop to see how/why we came up with this model and how it works in our […]
[…] can read this series on Creating a Writing Workshop to see how/why we came up with this model and how it works in our […]
[…] Creating a Homeschool Writing Workshop Add a Comment […]
[…] Creating a Homeschool Writing Workshop Add a Comment […]
[…] on to read the other four stories in that book. For our writing workshop (see more about our homeschool writing workshop here), I had the kids try writing in the style of Dr. Seuss. LD groaned and said he can’t rhyme […]
[…] on to read the other four stories in that book. For our writing workshop (see more about our homeschool writing workshop here), I had the kids try writing in the style of Dr. Seuss. LD groaned and said he can’t rhyme […]
[…] Creating a Homeschool Writing Workshop – Post #1 — How/Why we needed a change in our writing pro… […]
[…] Creating a Homeschool Writing Workshop – Post #1 — How/Why we needed a change in our writing pro… […]
[…] Creating a Homeschool Writing Workshop – Post #1 — How/Why we needed a change in our writing pro… […]
[…] Creating a Homeschool Writing Workshop – Post #1 — How/Why we needed a change in our writing pro… […]
[…] Creating a Homeschool Writing Workshop – Post #1 — How/Why we needed a change in our writing pro… […]
[…] Creating a Homeschool Writing Workshop – Post #1 — How/Why we needed a change in our writing pro… […]
[…] Creating a Homeschool Writing Workshop – Post #1 — How/Why we needed a change in our writing pro… […]
[…] Creating a Homeschool Writing Workshop – Post #1 — How/Why we needed a change in our writing pro… […]
[…] Creating a Homeschool Writing Workshop – Post #1 — How/Why we needed a change in our writing pro… […]
[…] Creating a Homeschool Writing Workshop – Post #1 — How/Why we needed a change in our writing pro… […]
[…] Creating a Homeschool Writing Workshop – Post #1 — How/Why we needed a change in our writing pro… […]
[…] Creating a Homeschool Writing Workshop – Post #1 — How/Why we needed a change in our writing pro… […]
[…] Creating a Homeschool Writing Workshop – Post #1 — How/Why we needed a change in our writing pro… […]
[…] Creating a Homeschool Writing Workshop – Post #1 — How/Why we needed a change in our writing pro… […]
[…] Creating a Homeschool Writing Workshop – Post #1 — How/Why we needed a change in our writing pro… […]
[…] Creating a Homeschool Writing Workshop – Post #1 — How/Why we needed a change in our writing pro… […]
[…] area. (The kids and I write together every day… and you can see pictures of our “writing workshop area at the bottom of this post.). This wood forward facing book display was about $55 from Amazon. […]
[…] area. (The kids and I write together every day… and you can see pictures of our “writing workshop area at the bottom of this post.). This wood forward facing book display was about $55 from Amazon. […]
[…] talk about some of the things we covered this year… everything from really diving into the Writing Workshop for the first time to our huge units on India, Gandhi, the Civil Rights Movement and China… […]
[…] talk about some of the things we covered this year… everything from really diving into the Writing Workshop for the first time to our huge units on India, Gandhi, the Civil Rights Movement and China… […]
[…] About Spelling: Even though ED has been writing with us for the past year in our homeschool writing workshop, I held off from starting a formal spelling program until this semester. Once we started, though, […]
[…] About Spelling: Even though ED has been writing with us for the past year in our homeschool writing workshop, I held off from starting a formal spelling program until this semester. Once we started, though, […]
[…] your own writing workshop: A series I did about how and why we started using a writing workshop format. Click here to see some of the Writing Workshop Lessons we […]
[…] your own writing workshop: A series I did about how and why we started using a writing workshop format. Click here to see some of the Writing Workshop Lessons we […]
[…] Creating a Homeschool Writing Workshop – This is the first in a long series (of about 10 or 12 posts) about how our homeschool writing workshop works. […]
[…] Creating a Homeschool Writing Workshop – This is the first in a long series (of about 10 or 12 posts) about how our homeschool writing workshop works. […]