Last week, my coauthors and I created a series of posts that we hope you’ll find helpful for getting your school year off to a great start. Whether you are new to writing workshop, or a leader of this work, we hope you found something there!
This was an exciting blog series for us to write. This series, like no other, prompted all of us to rethink our own definitions of the basics of writing workshop. How do we, as a community define the essentials of a successful writing workshop? What are the essentials, anyway? This series prompted us to work as a group through shared documents, emails, and phone calls to share our thinking to come to a common understanding of each of the separate topics for this series. In a sense, each post was really, truly, coauthored by the Two Writing Teachers Team, more than ever before.
In case you missed it, here are the posts:
On Tuesday, August 1, Lanny kicked off the series with his post on the underlying philosophy of writing workshop.
Later that day on Tuesday, I shared basics of unit planning.
On Wednesday, August 2, Melanie wrote about the overall structure of writing workshop.
On Thursday, Stacey wrote about how to design effective minilessons.
On Friday, Lanny shared information on how to confer with students during writing workshop.
On Saturday, Betsy wrote about how to meet the needs of all your students through small group work inside writing workshop.
On Sunday, Kathleen wrote about the important role of mentor texts in the teaching of writing.
On Monday, August 7, Deb shared advice on how to set up your classroom environment to support your writers.
That brings us to today. Last night’s twitter chat was a smashing success. If you missed it, you can use the hashtag #TWTBlog to revisit the conversation, and even keep it going.
UPDATE: Jessica Carey, aka “jcareyreads” is the winner of Renew! Become a Better — and More Authentic — Writing Teacher by Shawna Coppola. Congratulations! Thanks for being a part our amazing Two Writing Teachers community.
TWO WRITING TEACHERS 
I really enjoyed reading this series right before school. It was helpful! I have one question though: I teach 3rd grade. What is the thinking on when/if or what place technology/word processing has with this age group in the writing workshop? My principal seems to be under the impression that TC is anti technology use in the writing process for 3rd graders. I would think in the final draft, revision stage it would make sense, and would like to know where you stand on this topic. Thanks for the blog!
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Hi Lisa! This is a great question. As a former TCRWP staff developer, I’ve always encouraged tech integration from grades 3 and on up. Typically, keyboarding practice begins in third grade (in many schools anyway) and later in the year when kids are typing fluently enough they might do all their drafting on the computer (even a first draft). In general, idea generating still happens in the notebook – but they could pop out of the notebook to draft by typing. In many of my schools where I am currently literacy coach, kids are offered the choice of typing or writing by hand for drafting. Teachers coach kids to make a choice that will allow them to get as much writing done as possible. Additionally many units lend themselves to lots of digital forms of publishing -blogs, websites, presentation slides, vlogs, podcasts, short films, and more. To hear straight from at current TCRWP staff member though, I would recommend posting to the Units of Study for Teaching Writing Facebook page.
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Planning with intention and reflecting are essential for our students. Thank you for sharing a place where we can do both.
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This was an awesome series for kicking off the school year! Thanks for so much inspiration! Wishing everyone a great school year!
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