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Common-Core Aligned Writer's Workshops

Thanks to its partnership with publisher Eye on Education, EducationWorld is pleased to present this tip from Writer's Workshop for the Common Core by Warren Combs. In this piece, Combs aligns the development of a writer's workshop with the Common Core State Standards for writing.

The Common Core State Standards for Writing (Range of Writing—10) call upon students in grades 3 through 12 to "write routinely over extended time frames (time for research, reflection and revision) and shorter time frames (a single sitting or a day or two) for a wide range of tasks, purposes and audiences." The writer's workshop can easily be used to reach this standard when implemented with these six simple strategies in mind.

  1. Invite your students to write with you, using yourself as a model. Free yourself from hovering over and "helping" students as they write. Most of that monitoring distracts them from writing. For sure, stop writing for an instant conference if a student shows signs of being overwhelmed. As you model intense engagement in your own writing, an increasing number of students will follow your example.
  2. Choose writing topics within the bounds of the math, reading, science or social studies curriculum.
  3. Quantify expectations of all writing tasks and present students with a simple rubric for self-assessment.
  4. Keep all writing tasks within appropriate time limits.
  5. Schedule students to experience the writing process together one step at a time; have word- and sentence-study centers available for students who finish tasks early.
  6. Make sure that students write on similar topics, genres and modes to take full advantage of their ability to help each other when their writing is complete.

 

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