Katherine Bomer once said, “Writing celebration is the most important part of the writing process.” With that being said, there should be ample time set aside to celebrate the hard work of writers who are in every Writing Workshop.
I’ve been asked, on a number of occasions, how “Publishing Parties” would go in my classroom. It’s a hard question to answer since there’s no one way to have students publish their work at the end of a unit of study. Still, I’ve been asked about this again recently, so I created a graphic that represents four common ways that many Writing Workshop teachers choose to have their students publish their work.
As with any celebration, I almost always chose to have food present at my celebrations. The food could range from chips and cookies to healthier treats. (If you’re baking or buying food, and inviting another class, be sure to ask the other teacher if s/he has students with food allergies so that you don’t have something in the classroom that could potentially get anyone ill.) I always allotted 30 – 40 minutes for fourth and fifth graders to share with others, even during an Open Mike. Then, I provided 10 – 20 minutes for snacking and socializing. However, the timing for your students will vary based upon their experience with writing celebrations, their ability to listen and provide feedback for sustained periods of time, and, of course, their age.
Finally, the four types of celebrations I listed above are four of many ways you can celebrate your students’ writing. Do you celebrate with your students in a way that’s not listed here? Please tell us (and others who read this post) about it by leaving a comment.
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Our school has tried open mic, gallery displays, parent teas, and peer shares(within the class, as well as within the grade). Here are some of the other celebrations we have tried: using a shelf of the library as a display location, podcasts, and if you are displaying the writing on the bulletin board, leaving a large page for readers to leave comments.
Our school also has upper grade classes “buddied” with lower grade classes. The students enjoy sharing their work with their buddy. The upper grade students are very encouraging and the lower grade students LOVE to show their work.
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They are usually pretty basic, but can get more advanced. There’s a great one in Davis and Hill’s Book The No-Nonsense Guide to Teaching Writing that you might like.
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I teach Creative Writing to young adults as part of an enrichment program. Last year we celebrated the end of NaNo (National Novel Writing Month) with a reading and party. Parents and friends were invited. This year, the enrichment program is sponsoring a combination Art Show (to showcase work from the art classes) and a Public Reading with my students. I’d like to offer sparkling grape juice in plastic champagne glasses with snacks of cheese cubes and crackers to give it that “upscale” feel. I will also ask the adults attending to participate in a writing exercise and some how have the students critique their parents’ work!
I would be interested to see what you’ve used as comment cards at similar Peer Share, etc readings.
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I had some trouble with celebrations in my class last year b/c of the word celebration. One of my students wasn’t allowed to participate in them for religious reasons. I tried calling them “parties for congratulating ourselves for our hard work”, but finally gave up. I continued to “celebrate” and honor their work by hanging it in the hall. My principal is the best principal and he routinely mentions work that is posted on our morning announcements. He will say something like, “Make sure you stop and read the wonderful poems the grade 3/4 class has put up in the hall!” They love that! This year I don’t have any allergy restrictions or other restrictions, so I will probably try some real celebrations, but at the end of the last year, I felt that most of my students were satisfied with just taking the work home. We saved it all year, then made a fancy cover and bound it together with a comb binding machine. They thought that was cool and it made a nice keepsake, as well as showing all in one place the progress they had made.
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