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Writers Workshop: WritingFix's Homepage
sharing resources and ideas for setting up a writer's workshop in your classroom In Northern Nevada, many of the Teacher Consultants who work for the Northern Nevada Writing Project foster a writers workshop environment in their classrooms. If you were to gather all of these consultants together in a room and ask them to explain how they create and maintain their workshops, all would have a different answer. In Northern Nevada, one thing we've discovered about Writers Workshop is that each teacher must individualize the concept to match their own style of teaching. A writers workshop is not a formula or a program that can be replicated from classroom to classroom. Creating a writers workshop involves embracing a philosophy and then discovering personal ways to make the philosophy work for your own classroom. All of our NNWP Teacher Consultants in Northern Nevada have found their own paths when setting up their writers workshop environments. Of course, they recklessly borrowed big ideas from each other and from the "big names" who write about classroom workshops. But ultimately, the workshops became their own individualized creations. And what we really love about our NNWP Consultants is that they now go out of their way to share what they've learned and their adaptations. This webpage links you to some of the Writers Workshop Resources currently being shared by the Northern Nevada Writing Project's Teacher Consultants. We hope you're inspired by this page's links. We hope you adapt any ideas to fit your own style of teaching. We hope you're ultimately inspired to share your adaptations with others. |
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Northern Nevada Writers Workshop...Projects & Resources |
WritingFix's Writing Process & Mentor Text Homepages |
Patty Foncault's Popular In-service Class |
The writing process is present in every Writers Workshop. Over the Summer of 2008, a group of NNWP TCs worked together during an Advanced Institute to launch the following pages of resources. These pages are works-in-development, and they will grow during the 2009-2010 school year.
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Meet Northern Nevada Writing Project Consultant Patty Foncault. Since 2003, Patty has been hosting an annual inservice on Writers Workshop for her Northern Nevada colleagues. Patty's "Write On!" inservice became so popular, in fact, that in 2007 she launched the class's sequel: "Still Writing On!" Patty will forever hold the Northern Nevada honor of offering the first inservice class that demanded a sequel! Patty continues to be very active with the Northern Nevada Writing Project. Between mentoring at the NNWP's Summer Institute and offering her popular inservice, we're lucky that she finds time to translate her class's inservice materials into HTML code that can be posted here at WritingFix. But she's doing it. In 2008, Patty began posting materials from her inservice classes here. You can visit her page of inservice resources by clicking here. |
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Carol Gebhardt's Writers Workshop Inservice |
Mentor Text Lessons for Writers Workshop:
In 2005, thanks to a $25,000 grant from SBC and the Washoe Education Foundation, we began building a new resource here at WritingFix: a collection of writing lessons inspired by some of our favorite picture books. 100 teachers from Northern Nevada took the class, receiving free picture books and 6 trait materials in exchange for proposing an original lesson that we could post at the website. The very best lessons from that workshop are posted at this collection. Click here to access this resource.
The Chapter Book Lesson Collection The 2005 Picture Book Workshop (see above) was more popular than we could have imagined. So in 2006, thanks to a new $25,000 grant from the AT & T and the Washoe Education Foundation, we began building a new resource here at WritingFix: a collection of writing lessons inspired by well-written chapter book excerpts. 100 teachers from Northern Nevada took the class, receiving free chapter books and 6 trait materials in exchange for proposing an original lesson that we could post at the website. The very best lessons from that workshop are posted at this collection. Click here to access this resource.
Since 1992, the Northern Nevada Writing Project has sponsored the annual Piñon Poetry Festival. The festival honor not only poetry but also the life of Bill Abrams, a Northern Nevada Writing Project Consultant and poet who passed away in 1998. At the festival, teachers attend with some of their favorite student writers, and together, they write and publish poetry, inspired by presentations by NNWP Consultants who love poetry. In 2004, we began posting the Piñon Poetry presentations by NNWP Teacher Consultants on-line at WritingFix so that any teacher could access the lessons, not just the teachers attending the actual festival. The page has since developed into a collection of dozens and dozens of lessons and prompts, all perfect for Writers Workshop. Click here to access this resource and to learn more about the Piñon Poetry Festival and Bill Abrams.
Ah yes, our newest on-line collection of lessons that would be loved by students in any Writers Workshop: the iPod collection, which began taking shape in 2008. Inspired by music, videos, and podcasts that can be shared over a classroom iPod, these lessons inspire students to write poems, stories, narratives, essays...you name it. Thanks to a generous donation of 80 iPods from Washoe County's Technology Department, teachers who took this workshop received a "classroom iPod" in exchange for a proposed lesson. The best of these lessons became part of our on-line collection, which you can access by clicking here.
The Writing Lesson of the Month Network If you run a writers workshop and aren't a member of the NNWP's Writing Lesson of the Month Network, we have to wonder about you. Here is a free service that e-mails a tried and tested lesson on the first day of every month. These lessons are chosen because they're the type of writing that students will ask if they can continue working on them during writers workshop time. Become a member, if you haven't already. You won't be sorry. Click here to create a profile and to start receiving the e-mails. |
Meet NNWP Teacher Consultant, Carol Gebhardt. While serving as NNWP Co-Director, Carol began two new Writers Workshop classes during the 2008-2009 school year. The first workshop was inspired by the work of Lucy Calkins. The second workshop was inspired by the work of Ralph Fletcher. Carol is in the process of posting materials from these inservice classes at WritingFix. You can access this under-development page by clicking here. |
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Jodie Black's Kindergarten Writers Workshop Materials |
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Meet Northern Nevada Writing Project Consultant Jodie Black. Often touted as "One of the best kindergarten teachers in Northern Nevada," Jodie brought a unique perspective to the NNWP during the five years she served as Co-director; Jodie showed us what writing could and should look like in primary classrooms. In addition to WritingFix's page dedicated to the Six by Six: Trait Writing with Primary Writers Guide, Jodie also is coordinating a new page of resources that shares materials from her year-long kindergarten writers workshop. Click here to access these materials, which she began posting in 2009. |
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Theresa Crowley's Writers Workshop Scrapbooks |
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Meet NNWP Teacher Consultant, Theresa Crowley. Over the summer of 2009, Theresa began posting materials from one of her most successful strategies for her writers workshop: creating a classroom scrapbook "starring" starring her current group of students. The classroom book--entitled What Do Writers Do?--becomes a celebrated feature of her students' writers workshop, serving as a personalized reminder of their jobs as writers, and a treasured artifact by the teacher who keeps the book. Theresa has posted sample pages from one of her past classroom scrapbooks at WritingFix, along with her philosophy of why she keeps one. She hopes you'll be inspired to do something similar, if you maintain a writers workshop. You can access Theresa's project page by clicking here. |
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Corbett Harrison's Writers Workshop Revision Strategies |
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Meet NNWP Teacher Consultant, Corbett Harrison. In his Seven Elements of a Crafted Writing Lesson Training, Corbett stresses the importance of genuine revision during writers workshop. Corbett says, "Students who understand what they're revising for and who learn to do it authentically, those students are the ones who learn the most about writing. Revision can't be glossed over in interest of time." To promote authentic, trait-inspired revision, Corbett created Writing Trait Post-it notes. He shares these Post-its at WritingFix. You can access the templates by clicking here. |
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Journals that inspire Students during Writers Workshop |
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At WritingFix, we believe the best writers workshops pieces begin in student journals, and that students who love writing in their journals (or writers notebooks) will find much more repeated success during a classroom workshop. In 2008, we began assembling a new page of on-line resources dedicated to helping students love their journals and the writing they do in them. In just a short time, the page has become one of the most popular pages at WritingFix. Click here to access this page of journaling resources. |
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Writers Workshop at the Secondary Level |
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Of particular note on the circle below, beneath the names of each step of the writing process, are suggestions for which of the 6 traits might be focused on during that step of writing. Two secondary teachers--one middle school, one high school--both contributed resources and thoughts about what writers workshop can look like at the secondary level. Below, find links to these resources:
We have less than 100 copies of the now-out-of-print Secondary Writing Guide in our storeroom. We give copies to teachers who a) send us original classroom resources that we can post at this website or b) send us middle or high school student samples for any of the lessons we feature at WritingFix. Contact us at publish@writingfix.com if you have a resource or sample you think we might be able to use.
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Write On!
The cover of the NNWP's Secondary Writing Guide (now out-of-print) provided a graphic that attempted to show a connecting among the writing genres, the writing process, and the writing traits. Many teachers who struggle with juggling genre, process, and traits found the graphic very helpful. Return to the top of this page
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