Writing Workshop Meets Homeschool

(This post is part one of two. The second is here.)

I've been meaning to write about writing.

It's been such an area of struggle and growth this year so it's taken some time to find the words to document it. This year with my son, I've used a writing workshop approach, which was something I used and loved for years as a classroom teacher. (If you're really curious to know all the ins and outs about writing workshop, here's a great source.) Even though there were certain aspects of the approach that are designed for a classroom that I'd have to adapt or forego (such as having a peer writing partner), here are the key points about why I chose it for homeschool anyway.

Why I Chose Writing Workshop

Writing deserves to be taught. I believe in one of the main tenets of writing workshop, which is that writing needs to be taught explicitly. There needs to be time carved out in the day that is always reserved for writing. Kids need to be taught in a systematic way about qualities and strategies of good writing.

It has a predictable structure. There are built-in routines and structures and my son benefits from things like that. There is always a short focused mini-lesson, then independent writing for the bulk of the time when the teacher (parent) confers with individuals about their work as they are working, then some sort of closure to recap or share.

It uses explicit, consistent teaching that helps kids grow. Writing is taught in units. For example, in fourth grade one of our five units this year was realistic fiction stories (narrative writing). Another was personal and persuasive essays (opinion writing).

Within a unit, every day has a mini lesson on one explicit strategy or habit or convention. The lesson should be brief (not much more than ten minutes) to leave kids lots of time to actually work on their own writing. A lesson in a realistic fiction unit might be on how to come up with story ideas, or on features of great story endings. Many lessons in our persuasive essay unit were on ways to craft writing to be really persuasive, such as acknowledging counterclaims. The lesson on any given day is not an assignment for the day but a skill kids can add to their repertoire for doing that particular type of writing well anytime. The lesson format uses a teaching technique called gradual release of responsibility, where the adult models the technique, then guides the students as they practice together, and then kids going off to try it in their independent work. The quality of students' writing within a unit gets better and better, following the trail of these specific lessons.

It uses academic choice-Students choose their own topics within the genre you are working on. They write about things they care about and rarely assigned topics. One unit we did this year was writing about history (informational writing). (Simultaneously we were reading all sorts of books on the American Revolution.) My son got to choose any subtopic he wanted to research fully and, with lessons as guidance for every step of the way, write a "book" about it, with several chapters. Being fascinated by war, he wasn't about to write about taxes or the Declaration of Independence; he chose to write about the Battles of Lexington and Concord and came up with detailed chapters to fill it out.

It teaches independence-Beyond the writing wisdom, parts of the lessons specifically encourage kids to make choices, to take initiative, to solve problems. In my first grade classroom I trained kids what to do when they thought they were done or how to tackle a word they didn't know how to spell so they didn't have to sit around or wait for me. They also knew how to handle a broken pencil or that they were always allowed to get up and move if their space or the people near them weren't helping them be productive. Kids found all this empowering and I think it helped them get a lot done and do their best. I knew that age-appropriate teaching of strategies for independence and problem solving would be part of any fourth grade writing workshop program as well, and indeed they are. 

It is personalized learning-While the lessons aim high, students work at their own pace and level. Some students produce more or longer pieces of writing than others. When the teacher confers with individuals during work time, she gives specific compliments about what works well in their writing and also teaches them next steps they can take to improve. No matter what type of writer they are, there is always a teachable next step. In first grade one child might get a quick lesson on how to "show, not tell" more in her stories, while another gets tips for saying words slowly to hear all the sounds. Obviously by setting out to homeschool one child, I'd be individualizing no matter what, but I liked that writing workshop was built for that.

It teaches revision-In the course of everyday writing workshop, writers often go back to pieces they wrote on a different day in order to make them better or add to them based on new learning. There are also formal built-in cycles of editing and revising, even for young kids, so students learn that these things are an integral part of the writing process. There is no teacher red pen on kids' writing, but they are taught how to use a checklist of age-appropriate skills to look through their own writing and fix it and improve it.


Those are all the reasons I love writing workshop and why I chose it to use with my son this year in homeschool. I was especially eager to use this excellent writing approach because my son had had almost no writing instruction in the last two years of public school. At the beginning of this year, he hadn't yet done any writing like what the standards said kids his age should be able to do. He had plenty of strengths to work with: had a big vocabulary, lots of background knowledge, imagination, and was a good speller. I knew he was capable. But he claimed he didn't like writing. He lacked organization, only used occasional punctuation and capitalization, he wasn't solid on sentence structure, his handwriting was often large and sloppy, he was easily distracted when writing, and had low stamina for it. I couldn't wait to tackle it and help him love writing. I wanted him to have excellent writing workshop lessons to inspire him. The fourth-grade Units of Study in Opinion, Information, and Narrative Writing written by Lucy Calkins and others were one of the only homeschool materials this year I spent serious money on.

...While my son has made great progress in our first homeschool year (and I'm still a big fan of writing workshop), we've had plenty of challenges along the way. I will share some of our challenges in the area of writing, and how we handled them, in the next post!