Tuesday, February 19, 2008
Decisions, decisions...
OK, just like the reader's workshop, I would LOVE to structure my classroom as a writer's workshop. (Can one do both? A question to save for later). So, just like with the reader's workshop, how would you grade students? Would it be OK if one student was cranking out paper after paper, while another spent all semester (or year) on just a few really good essays? Would I even have time to keep up with everyone's projects? I feel like it could take me a whole week to go through and do some good conferencing, so by the time it came around again, they could be so far off from where they were the last time we talked. I remember in high school I had a teacher for creative writing that tried a workshop-style kind of set up, but it seemed a lot more structured than what Blasingame and Bushman suggest. The semester was devoted to writing a short story for four genres: romance, mystery, science-fiction, and action. She conferenced with us and everything, but all I remember about the class was hating it. I didn't like any one of the genres we had to do, and I didn't really feel like I had creative freedom. How do I avoid this kind of workshop. And, back to the question above, how would one go about creating a reader and writer workshop classroom? Is both possible, or is it doing too much?
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Bethany, you raise some great questions here, ones that will probably follow you into teaching and stay with you throughout your professional life. Just how do I do this so it works? Sometimes teaching is a form of hypothesizing--you form a theory, test it out, tweak it a bit, and either find it works or find you need a different theory. And every year is different. What worked this year may not work the next because you have a whole new batch of kiddos with very different needs, expectations, and skills from those you've had before. It's challenging but never dull.
Keep in mind that B&B's description of workshop is just a suggestion. It's one form of how to set up workshop in your class. There are others out there. Or you may want to create your own, to pull from this theorist and borrow from that teacher. Sometimes it'll be trial and error. Sometimes you'll nail it the first time (and it's a heady feeling when that happens).
As far as a reader/writer workshop, I think Barri has already answered that in a post, but yes, it is possible. Some teachers alternate days while others want to focus on one more than the other so they limit one workshop to give the other more time. It also depends on your school schedule what works best, like if you see students 5 days a week for 50 minutes or two-three days a week for 90 minutes.
There are no easy answers to any of your questions. Sorry. Teaching is very much a tailoring to the need of the students, and the students change every year--and I'm repeating myself. Ugh!
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