Fixing the Flaws in the Writing Workshop Model Ep. 4

Many teachers are abandoning writing workshop… but not because it failed. It’s because the structure was missing.

In this episode of Beyond the Paragraph, I’m sharing how you can reclaim the power of workshop with simple, transformative shifts that bring clarity, consistency, and calm to your writing block.

Whether you’re a former fan of Calkins-style instruction or just tired of chaotic, unproductive workshop time, this episode will help you:

• Identify why traditional workshop often falls apart
• Discover how structure with explicit instruction makes all the difference
• Reignite your love for writing time

Let’s bring back the workshop we actually wanted...the one where students truly have ownership, skills are clear, and everyone knows the plan.

➡️ Learn more about the FULL Structured Writing training PD

📆 Grab my yearlong writing planner for free (it includes my eBook!)

🎥 Watch the teaching strategies in action on YouTube

📝 Read the latest blog posts for writing tips & ideas

HAVE A QUESTION? Email me at robin@structuredwritingteacher.com

Transcript

Ep 4 Fixing the Flaws in the Writing Workshop Model 

Transcript:
(00:01) The words writing workshop might now just be another way of saying chaos or ineffective And you're not alone A lot of people feel that way There's just been some shifts and changes over the years that have sort of gotten us away from our core purpose for doing a workshop I mean people love the idea of it it it probably just it didn't do what it promised that it would do in the beginning And I want to talk about how workshop itself and the idea of it actually isn't the problem It's it's the
(00:40) structure that we put into the workshop that can help it become far far more effective So in this episode I'm going to walk you through the five things that I did to change my workshop to make it feel more consistent more clear more supportive and actually like a lot more fun I'm going to talk to you about how to fix your workshop and not abandon it And then how we're going to pull some things apart like separate some things out And you may have used units of study in the past You you might still use it In the beginning there was a lot of it that we all loved We loved student choice We
(01:21) loved that there was ownership of it and we loved that there was real authentic writing time and there was a push for conferences and using mentor text and all those things were great and they still matter We should still do them But the lessons themselves started to get maybe watered down or not targeted And even when I looked up in one of the recent units of study books not to bash it but here we go Um in one of them I looked up sentence complexity which for me is the third most important skill in my program and there was it it was
(01:58) mentioned one time on one page in there and it said "This is a complex sentence Now you try it." Like that was literally it for the lesson And I'm thinking oh my god they're not going to be able to learn some of this complexity by here's one now you do it have a good day That's not how that works So the students weren't really building toward anything in the workshop And and we were starting to feel like what are we doing here and so my theory was was that you know we're designed to be the coaches Um but
(02:32) then at the what happened was is we ended up being everything We were the ref the quarterback the scoreboard keeper Like it was all about the teacher and not focused on the students And so how did all this happen and back in uh I think it was 2001 we had the No Child Left Behind Act that came out and there was a big shift on accountability and student assessment um the money that the schools would receive federally were tied to that and so achieving high on those standardized tests shifted the focus and then the states started to realize well if we're going to do this that we don't really have standards that are
(03:15) common around everyone Everyone was kind of doing different things So they created these common core state standards and and the assessments shifted toward academic writing and when units of study when that all started the Calkins the workshop it was more of a stress on narrative writing and poetry writing and I'm not saying to go back to only that um needs to be a good balance but then what happened was to address all of these requirements units of study just you know it's shifted into these units of study So there were literally nine week units on one type of writing or
(03:57) genre and they would study argument and they would work on an argument essay for nine weeks and they just had this one output at the end And so working on that long of a piece of writing it just zapped the kids' energy and their will to carry on and probably your will to carry on too um it just didn't match with what we knew a workshop can and should do So instead I think what happened was they said "Let's call it a workshop because we love that but we're going to stuff all this other stuff in there with the
(04:32) common core standards No child gets left behind." But take a look at where we at today Um we're we're struggling still And even though we have you know hired our expectations on their writing which is good some of it I'm not sure they're developmentally ready to do quite honest But anyway I'm not in charge of the world Um I I had to figure out a way to make all this work or else I can't how can I be a teacher and not make it work right so I want to talk about the five things that I changed to my program
(05:10) and um how they made all the difference And you're going to notice that of these five things two of them relate to the workshop The other three do not because workshop is nowhere near the only writing that we do So we're going to jump into change number one That is the warm-up when the kids come into the classroom You're getting us started I used to do one of those you know alliteration things where it was like Monday musing and Tuesday things and Wednesday word and Thursday thought Thursday whatever Friday fun
(05:44) Okay But it just felt like filler It It was cute And the kids picked up on that and they were like "It's a word Wednesday." We weren't moving the ball down the field anymore the kids weren't getting anywhere with these types of warm-ups but I was able to take attendance However you can still take attendance and have them progress at their skills and get better at ELA at the same time So I do this with I call them the ELA three a day And they have three tasks right away I have one of my students leaders set a timer for 5 minutes And this will feel unbelievable to you at first but your kids will be
(06:25) able to get this done in 5 minutes The first time you'll be like "Oh my gosh there's no way." But they will It's really important for them to learn how to do things quickly efficiently correctly without this like slow walk up to it Because in real life we're told to do things with a quick turnaround That's like the definition of America So they need to get used to that And there are some kids who can't do it in five minutes And so you'll differentiate for them and you know how to do that But the three things that they do is number
(06:57) one sentence combining And there's a lot of research out there that shows that they'll start to understand and use correct grammar and punctuation When you have them regularly do sentence combining so I give them two basic sentences they combine them together into a compound sentence They have to get it perfect to get the point They have to have the capital letter the comma the conjunction All words have to be spelled correctly because they're right there in front of you And we do that for two months And I know that
(07:29) feels kind of like blah but I'll tell you what we do in the other ones and then and then this will make sense So they highlight you could have them highlight their comma conjunction all that There's a little checklist with it and they get used to it like this is what we do And some of them actually love like have you ever had kids who just want to copy stuff off the board they really love having the sentences there for them that they just need to calmly and quietly figure out how to put them together perfectly And then after that we move on to the next task which
(08:03) is test prep And there's a multiple choice question And it's typically not super difficult because during that warm-up you want them to just have like to to practice the skill and figure it out all in their own because first of all you actually do have to take attendance We know this And if the questions are too hard then they're all like "Uh what is this i don't know what this is How do I do this?" Next thing you know you've got way too many questions chaos you have behavior problems they're frustrated I would
(08:39) never want to frustrate them with a warm up The warm-up is to literally warm them up and then get them ready for the day That's that's what they're meant to do So you want questions that are relatively simple but still attack that standard So maybe you're doing a simple question about verb tenses or something and then you do that same skill for the entire week Focus on one skill So Friday you can have a discussion Then you can say "All right all week you've been practicing this skill on verb tenses What do you think we you learned from
(09:13) that what are some rules that we could tell someone if they just walked in here today and they had missed that whole week and you told them they have to do all these questions what rules would you tell them about verb tenses so that they can remember how to do this that's constructivist pedigogy I've talked about before I might do a whole show on that I love it so much Where they're having experiences and they're developing their own definitions as they go along Great for EL learners too So rather than passively sitting back and waiting for you to tell them the
(09:47) definition or to tell them the rule um that that just it doesn't give them any memory of it There's no skill building there So they've combined a sentence they've done their grammar test prep question and the third thing is they do a quick write every day And these are images that are really engaging They're either funny or weird or dramatic or confusing There's all these different kinds of moods and uh they're all represented different genres are represented in the quick writes and I teach them to write scenes and not
(10:18) stories I need to go into more detail in another podcast about scenes and stories so you can understand the difference between them and explain them to the kids um in a way that they're like "Oh oh okay." So we might do a whole Quick Crate podcast But this is like this is so magical You won't even believe how this is going to change your class Number one because it builds their voice And so they're working on voice daily daily daily and their stamina daily daily They get faster They write more They're able to pivot and respond to any type of genre prompt that they're given Um and they do
(10:59) all of this believe it or not in five minutes And they earn three points like one per day I can't express enough the impact of these warm-ups it's it's unusually wild what happens because the picture or the image that's on the quick rate that they get every day they love coming to class just to see what the picture is So they'll kind of come jogging in like "What is it what is it oh look at that.
(11:27) " But they can't do it It's like dessert They can't do it until they get through the first two tasks So don't let them hop ahead but they want to so bad But it helps them practice their fluency It gets their brain going They've got repetition There is routine Um you're able to manage your class because the kids actually crave this routine despite what they'll tell you But when they know what to do every day without having to be told over and over and over over again do they just come in they feel more adult
(11:59) they feel they have more ownership of the classroom because they get you they get your system They're like "I got this." So they come directly in they open up their notebook or their their digital their computer Um the timer gets started by one of your students They know exactly what's expected of them And if you ever have to stop this routine for something they will freak out It's so much fun I love it when they freak out when we change our routine Don't do it often though So the second thing that I changed um in
(12:32) my workshop was and and when you start this at the beginning of the year it does take a couple times a week to get all the wheels turning but once the workshop is up and off the ground it's a one time a week thing There are six skills that I teach on repeat and they're in order of important The highest priority skills the one that I give the most attention to And the top three skills are the ones that I would give as much time as you can and come back over and over and over again because you'll get so much bang for your buck with those three skills
(13:02) Sprinkle in the others You'll hear more about that You might not agree with me on the order of this but I personally have played around with this and this is what I found to be the most effective So number one skill they work on is voice Then they work on hooks and then sentence complexity All three of those are very important High amount of time attention because those three will help your students pivot into anything and use those skills So then we make we head into skill four which is figurative language then vivid imagery and then show don't tell And those last three are
(13:35) geared toward narrative writing or creative writing And they're important because obviously like I'm a creative writer I love those But those lessons actually they can pick up on those a little bit quicker And the first three I mean voice is not meant to be hard and they actually pick up on that quicker than adults but that's what develops their confidence but hooks and sentence complexity you need to put a lot more time on that If you put more attention into practicing hooks I can't tell you how much easier their essay writing is Because one of the biggest problems when
(14:08) you're doing essay writing is when you say "Now you're going to write your hook Make it interesting Intrigue your reader Get their attention." and they're like "What?" I have a very specific way that I teach hooks and and they've been practicing this a lot before we get up to it Again might do a whole show just on hooks Um I'll teach you how I how I teach them So those six skills we're doing on repeat And there are times that I will quote borrow time from other days in the weeks to to go deeper on a skill because I need more time and I want them to practice more and do more independent
(14:48) um like skills based practice with it where they're writing stuff over and over again uh before we move into the workshop But then during the workshop the the destruct the direct instruction time is at seven minutes because there's research around that that our capacity to take in information and the amount of time that we can do that That's why a lot of YouTube videos are about 7 minutes and why phone numbers are seven digits long So if you want to keep it short and snappy you're going to keep it engaging You'll have great back and forth conversation right before they
(15:24) start writing So all of this means that there are no surprises about the workshop There's no surprises in the whole program I mean I saw a book one time that said "Here are 250 writing strategies and I was like this sounds like a nightmare." But in in my class they they see a wheel of six skills and you move an arrow around it You can make it however you want a big poster or you can just make it digital your student leader will move the arrow when you're moving on to that next skill So the kids see what's coming up Or you might have a discussion and
(16:01) say "Uh I think we're going to continue with this skill for one more week before we move on We want to go a little bit deeper with this So we're going to stick with hooks for one more week." Something like that So you're not running around all the time trying to find your next brand new lesson you know the order of the skills that you're teaching and you base your instruction on your students progress not on a pacing chart that says on this day you need to do this It's based on how they are progressing with it And so
(16:33) you might repeat things because they need it or move ahead more quickly because they got it They they really love this routine because they actually know like they love knowing what's coming up Um they don't like it when you suddenly just say "Okay now today we're going to learn how to do this really complex thing.
(16:57) " It freaks them out Now those were the first two things that I would change Um and just because I'm going to be really opinionated here those are non-negotiables for me So if you ever decided that you wanted to give the program a try these things that I'm talking about today these are these are marching orders These are things that you will have to do in order to get the results that I'm telling you you can get Cuz it's not like you know when if you do a new diet and you're like well I'm just going to do 25% of the suggestions that they do And then you say well that
(17:28) diet doesn't work that you didn't do the diet So to get the program to work how it should you want to do these five parts that are non-negotiable So again the first one was ELA 3 a day Number two was having a workshop that focuses on six skills Third one using leaders during the workshop I I I'm not going to just let this go I will keep saying this It's so huge It changes the temperature in your room I mean it this idea came to me years years ago My son um I was I drove him to baseball practice and I was I let him out Bye Have a good time And I he ran out there
(18:11) to meet his teammates I'm sitting in the car in the parking lot watching and he runs up and stands next to this other kid and the two of them lead the entire team in their warm-ups Touch your toes Do this Do that My son never even told me that he was one of the co- captains He was just like so excited to have this responsibility and the coach was off over in the field like setting up the bases and getting all the gear and the equipment ready for them The kids were fine and they were so happy and I realized like they are
(18:44) capable of so much more than we can even imagine So the leadership roles really help and I literally have kids come in early the leaders set up the lights and the music and the timer and the digital spinner and your dares and all the things Um and so they are managing it on their side and on your side you are metaphorically putting the bases out and getting the equipment ready and doing what you need to do to help support them And then kids have other roles So like in their trios and trios are the groups of three that they get in after they've written in their workshop and one of
(19:22) them might be the one who decides how we're going to share our workout Okay are we all going to read out loud are we going to switch papers how are we going to do this one of them will be the one that would share out the diamond that they that they voted on as a group Things like that So everyone has kind of a role here and no one can hide and not do anything So the students are also tracking their own progress They're trying to increase their line length goal to see if they can hit that next goal for themselves
(19:52) and feel like they're making progress And it's not based on a on a grade It's based on that stamina They also have that choice in like choosing this the skill they're going to work on So if they choose number three sentence complexity they highlight it and then their trio can help them determine if that actually is an example of a complex sentence So having them check in with their trio allows them to take risks without being so worried about a grade instantly happening So they're their trio has their back and it kind of becomes like your SEAL program at the same time
(20:31) They're you teach them how to communicate with each other and support each other and it allows them to experiment without that fear of a sudden red pen showing up Once the workshop is started the captains give them another warm-up It's different It's basically a little categories question It's like "What are all the fruits that are red or what are the states that start with S?" Something like that And what that does is it gets everybody leaning forward into their notebook and writing something Every kid loves these questions Every kid in your
(21:06) class will write down some answers Um and I want you to think about that all the time How can I get my kids to lean in how can I keep them from slouching back and folding their arms and passively waiting for me to tell them the answer or give them a worksheet my I learned that skill from a boss of mine that I had like a a long time ago I was a social worker and at the beginning of the meeting he would have everybody say one thing at the beginning of the meeting And afterwards I asked him why he did that and he said that when you
(21:38) hear your own voice you are more inclined to use it again And that stuck with me for so long because an object in motion tends to stay in motion right so if they lean in they're stay leaned in They write their five red fruits their states with S They're already writing So just keep writing But you got to give them that opportunity to do that So now the kids are far more invested in the workshop You've got these motivation techniques I want to move into the fourth change that pulls us out of the workshop and that is the essay blocks I
(22:14) don't teach essays in the workshop I teach them in a 10day block and we use what's called a deconstruct method So I don't stand at the front of the room and say you're going to write an argument paper and we're going to practice it together And this might be an unpopular opinion but I would not suggest modeling the writing of it where you are writing in your style and your voice at your level and then you act as if you're struggling when you're not You know how to write a paper and then you sort of fake that you need oh I don't know what this next one what should this next line
(22:54) be oh did I do that right you know it's just doesn't feel authentic and they know that And so instead just flip this around again lean back into the constructivist pedagogy where they are the ones who are going to decide what makes sense and create the definition themselves based on an experience That experience is that I have student sample essays that are cut into strips and there are headers and I put all this mixed up inside a manila envelope put them in their trios or you could do two trios together And they have to match up all the sentences in the correct order
(23:31) with the headers Sometimes I put multiple essays in there so that they really have to work hard to figure out what goes with what They come up with the order that they think as a group an essay should be written in That's so powerful because then you can talk about this as a class If there are groups that have different opinions you could really dive into why that might be their memory of the order of an essay is so much stronger now by using that deconstruct method like we pull it apart and we put it back together and it's really fun and they're it's critical thinking It's positive communication
(24:07) It makes the writing process feel doable because the essays that they're reading are actual student essays I use my student essays from the previous year So my suggestion is that you not just go to chat GPT and have it write out some essays for you I I'd like him to feel more um authentic that it really does sound like it's coming from a kid and the the kids can tell that another student has done it I I'll take the ones in the past and I will tweak them some because I need everything to match up like with the length and everything So I'll I'll change it a little bit Um but they're
(24:43) student essays at a sixth grade level or an eighth grade level and just telling them those words that this is one of my students essays from last year It's so motivating for them And then once we start writing the essay it becomes easier for them because the first introduction that they're going to do um let's say hooks that we've practiced on for weeks when I tell them the rules remember when you write a hook they can already tell me the rules I don't have to go over it again I'm not wasting time on that We did it their hooks are way more higher level than you
(25:19) would have gotten if you just introduced it right there at the essay time and then we introduce a topic and so I use a hit introduction hit so they write their hook and then they introduce and they write their thesis and I talked to them how when you did your sentence combining in your workshop this is where the non-negotiable part comes in because they've done the sentence combining I can then pull on that and say have you done this before Have you written a compound and a complex complex sentence before yes That's what this introductory sentence should look like Your thesis
(25:56) could be a complex sentence You already know how to write one of those Like the biggest part of writing is just reminding them that they already know how to do this that they've they've done these um skills along the way and it and the paragraph feels doable I make that first paragraph a checkpoint and they get checks like points for just writing the introduction and they also get a separate point for writing their thesis correctly As long as their thesis is set up correctly the rest of their paper will flow So they got to get points for that They collect their points along the way So it's the process
(26:32) that earns them the point It's not just the final final output Then we move into the body paragraphs of that essay And um the fifth and the fifth and final thing that I changed in my program was studying CER and I built that into the program It's not like every once in a while we do CR We do it any moment that we're not doing an essay or workshop writing We use that format to answer all questions where they make a claim And I don't use the race strategy anymore just because state and answer were confusing because they should be one sentence and
(27:10) that was kind of getting them lost So I made everything whether it's literature or non-fiction um a claim which means you're answering the question fully and then once they get used to this you can add in an extra e in there and either your sec your first e could be explained in your own words and then e for evidence and then wrap it up with their reasoning So I teach them directly how to do all that citing evidence and coming up with your reasoning and we practice it so many times that once we get to that essay I can just say "You've already
(27:48) done body paragraphs You know how to do this right?" So it's like in basketball if we just didn't ever do the drills or go over the plays or practice this and that when it when it gets to the game you realize that all that matters I mean LeBron doesn't just show up at a game once a week They work so hard in between on drills and practice and watching video of other games Like it's so deep what they do And by the way if all of this is sounding like yes I want to know more about this How in the world am I going to do this i check the link below if you want to consider taking the it's a 10
(28:27) video training on exactly how the program works So go look for that if you're interested So workshop has kind of gotten like a bad rap sometimes but I suggest that we just redefine it for ourselves that we give it more structure that we focus on skill building and we pull the essay out of the workshop into a direct block where they are highly focused on that product So when you do all this right the workshop itself can be one of the most powerful parts of your ELA block So don't look it over This will give you some clarity and and your thinking will
(29:10) become clear on how writing actually works and the most effective way to do it And since there's so many parts to all of this I put together a planner where I show exactly how I fit everything in for the entire year And I use something called backwards planning And I've created like a road map to show you how I fit it all in in a year And I'm going to put a link below You can have my planner for free So go check that out Thanks for listening and I will see you in the next one [Music] Be sure to follow Beyond the Paragraph wherever you get your podcast and share this with a teacher bestie They will
(29:51) love you for it and so will I To go deeper and learn more about the structured writing method go to structuredwritingteer.com [Music]