What if we don’t launch Writing Workshop in August? Last year, I proposed this idea to our Kindergarten team: What if we started with Story Workshop instead? For several weeks, children composed stories through play, loose parts, clay, blocks, drawing, and oral storytelling, while receiving explicit phonics instruction each day. We weren’t waiting for them to be “ready” to write. Instead, we wondered what might happen if we gave storytelling and composition more time and space before asking written language to carry so much of the load. By the time we launched Writing Workshop in October, we noticed some exciting changes. In this post, I share what we tried, what we noticed, and why we’re excited to try it again this year.