Teacher Talk! How this Teacher Implemented a Structured Writer's Workshop in 8th Grade Ep 6

Meet Tisha, an 8th grade ELA teacher who implemented the structured writing workshop in her classroom. She shares what worked during her first year of implementation. 

You'll learn:
✔️How to use BOTH physical and digital notebooks for writing
✔️organization strategies for student leaders
✔️how to incorporate AI successfully in the writing process
✔️how this workshop changed her 8th graders

An episode not to be missed. Share with other ELA teacher friends! 

➡️ 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

How to Implement a Structured Writer's Workshop in 8th Grade | Teacher Talks 
Transcript:
(00:01) Today I want to share with you a really special interview that I did with Tisha who is an eighth grade teacher in West Virginia and she is going to share with you how she came upon structured writing workshops and how she implements it in her classroom and she is phenomenal she did all this in one year and there are some things that she talks about that I want you to note i actually had to write this down because she gave so many gems of things that takeaways that you could do in your class she's going to tell you
(00:34) how she uses physical notebooks versus the digital writing of the workshop very brilliant use of the notebooks versus the digital i love it um she has leader folders and she's going to show you those and how she uses them to help her leaders she's going to tell you how she incorporates AI into the writing program and its genius and she's going to tell you a little bit about her reaction from her eighth graders in how this writing program changed them i love this conversation and I'm so excited that you'll get to hear this from her so
(01:11) let's listen to Tisha  tisha Skinner and I teach 8th grade language arts at Williamstown Middle School um the middle school and the high school are combined so we have kind of a different structure here um uh I get to kind of watch all my kids um develop and go through high school and they come back and ask questions so I've figured out like what their problems are when they come back and they start asking for more i'm like okay we need to hit this a little heavier and writing was one of those things that I had figured out I really
(01:41) need to up my game i understood writing and I understood that they needed it in chunks and sections and they needed certain skills but I didn't really know how to put it all together so I went for like um last summer I started just patrolling Tik Tok and looking for strategies and like oh my gosh what are other people using i need something structured and um that's how I came upon you and the structured writing teacher i'm like I need structured writing so um I came up on you with that and then Josie Waznjak had also um told me about
(02:19) you and your program and said "You really need to check that out." And I admire her i think she's an amazing teacher and um so I took her advice what a cool combination and that was cool to talk to her i hope I have her on here hi Josie if you're listening um about combining workshop the way that you and I think you did too with edgy protocols as well right  yeah because I totally took on the edge of protocols mindset um and I started um working your program and doing it like how you had suggested and after I got um comfortable with it I
(02:57) started adding edge of protocol into the workshops so I could find them all that's awesome i love that it's it's the the idea is that you have repeatable like frames in a way of things that you have  rinse and repeat  rinse and repeat right and the  Yeah and the one that I used the most um with your writing program was the three time genre edge of protocol which allowed um my students to use a single image a single video a single excerpt to um write in the three different genres on the same topic so um what I liked about it is they were
(03:37) getting the practice for three types of um writing  with and not just one  yeah yeah i love that let's talk about that you have eighth grade do you have Did you have like multiple classes do you have short classes how much time  i I do i had four eighth grade English classes and then I have um one seventh grade reading class so so I'm trying to picture like how that would work then so did you have like an hour with each of them or  I had about 47 minutes is what I I know and it was tough to get the workshop in in the 40 47 minutes it was
(04:15) like everybody get in here workshop starting um so I had to do a little restructuring and I kept my um leaders for a little bit longer so that they learned the roles um at first um they did love the roles they loved they loved being in charge  wow  um so what I did um with um your workshop is I created like folders and I took like the I did a captain folder and um I had line length goal folders um and um the trio folders and I laid them up there for them to work with i also had a tray um of the DARE cards  um that they could pass out
(04:58) uh like I thought they're going to be the teachers so I needed to kind of set up their area um the way I would need some direction  so I laid your little directions um on their desk so that they could see like oh what am I supposed to be doing um if they forgot what their role was and then I also laid um your how to how to do the I don't know if you could see it um  yeah it's kind of the time blocks it it tells me like you're going to need five minutes for the warm-up about five minutes to discuss the short answers um seven to 15 minutes
(05:32) to write non-stop so they knew like how long they should be spending  and I also had a couple scripts up there for the leaders and I highlighted exactly what they were supposed to be saying anything that I needed to specify I put it in like parentheses for them and they just flipped and did it and it seemed to get better and better every session wow that's fantastic the organization of that that's what I love doing this with having so many teachers kind of come together in the Facebook group everybody's like adding in what they're
(06:02) doing and it's just really elevating the whole thing it's so cool and one thing I not set everything up like you said  i I created the diamond writer wall um I bought a diamond off of Amazon the great big diamonds to sit on their desk um I got a tray full of um diamonds for their notebooks and I mean  all kinds of different colors and at the end of the year it was so sweet when I was passing back their books um they were like "See I got two diamonds this year you didn't get a diamond.
(06:35) " And so they were their diamonds  competitive about it that's awesome i love it and you had you had sent me a video at one point which I just adored of the kids working like mad and one thing I noticed I wanted to kind of dive into this they were um typing at their computer but alongside them they have a composition notebook what So what's the difference between using the computer and putting stuff in a notebook um well I I have different things in there like transition word lists I put in the composition book so that they can refer back to that um when
(07:12) we're doing your skills workshop um I also make them put their activities all of their um stuff in that notebook handwritten  yeah handwritten that way they can refer back to it and it's in order it's organized all the skills that we work on are all in order it seemed to be a good reference guide for that that's super cool this is something I want everybody to hear there's so many questions about do I do a physical notebook do I do it digitally and you're saying all the notes and like all their resources and like this is my toolbox
(07:47) and they have their line length goal sheet that was in there too  nice so like okay I got my stuff I need and then they all pretty much typed it out they were all digital with their writing  yeah need the class kick slides and I used those so um I actually before I met with you I sat down and I I went back through and looked at the first uh writing session and I compared it to the last one and man they were they were impressive i mean we started with like little itty bitty paragraphs with no dialogue um no emotional response um and we ended up
(08:23) with like them writing off the page so um with lots of lots of quotations and dialogue lots of emotional response which  um I've really not had those kind of uh rewards in the past like I haven't seen that much growth in my kids writing what about they like how did they feel about I know you sent me some of their work for some of them which was phenomenal  oh well they obvious they're very proud of their writing i even had a parent at the end of the year that um had posted something on Facebook about how um her kids did better on the end of
(08:57) grade test and that um that that he had great great teachers and I wanted to say like they learned all this from this amazing writing teacher  uh they did you you gave them such wonderful strategies and they were very pleased with their writing and they made it vocal to tell me "Hey I know I did way better on writing than I've ever done.
(09:21) " Wow wow oh I love your kids what What you did the diamond wall which I did not realize until another teacher pointed it out in the video they're like "Look look look look at her wall." And it was in the background you didn't I didn't even see it what did you do with that wall what goes up there and how  I let them sign their signature on Well I had a kid who was really artsy draw like a 3D um diamond on black paper i think I had seen Josie did something like that like she had black paper in the background and she had something on
(09:53) maybe like a paper towel roll and she pulled it down and the kids were writing like a line or something from writing and I I pretty much stole that idea I think maybe from Josie but I adapted it and did it my way and I just made it a bulletin board where they signed their name um and they got to be one of the honored uh diamond writers oh so when whenever they got a diamond go sign the wall  yeah you got to sign the wall  wow that's  And it stayed up all year and the little boy who drew it he goes "Can I please can I have that at the end of the
(10:26) year?"  And so he took it home what are you gonna do next year you're gonna have to get him you'll have it  hey I'm gonna have to get him from ninth grade at least they're in the same building  right right come on back for the next four years buddy that is awesome that first assignment I can say probably was like the hook line and sinker for me and I've heard other people and even you talk about how awesome that first assignment is that voice assignment with the object in the room and I kind of I didn't really know
(10:58) how well it was going to go i have eighth graders so I thought that might be kind of I don't know if they're going to get into this  right  man did they get into it  wow i know oh it's kind of one it is like a little unicorn of an activity that I kind of stumbled upon and I and I maybe it's because it works with eighth graders because it's not just you know write a diary entry of your pencil it's like find the weirdest thing you can possibly find in this room that nobody is looking at and like that it just turns it into this weird little
(11:35) thing that they write they come out so cool  and it didn't take long before we were through with voice which I think voice took us maybe three weeks um before we were done with voice I was seeing improvements in the writing already right  stuff that no amount of direct instruction from me was really going to make those changes  oh wow  i feel like a combination of how you did the the working slides where they literally watch it they see me give the examples then they do it and then you give them like that scaffolding of now you got to
(12:12) do a little bit more on your own um that was the game changer for them like internalizing what you said and the skill that you were teaching now we get to practice it now create your own and it wasn't like I'm going to tell you the skill let's do it together and then they just automatically started putting it in our writing  right right and it's one of those skills that they act they actually can do much easier than adults can do  it was impressive for sure  you know they've got they know how to get attitude you
(12:46) tell them get a little attitude they're like "Okay [Laughter] I love that." Um tell me about the shift into essay writing did you see um some of the effects of workshop and skillbased stuff did it help with the essays oh it definitely did after we finished the GSA I did a lot of uh just little random interviewing and like what do you feel like we did the most that really helped you and I would say out of out of like 10 kids I definitely got an overwhelming out of eight of them probably mentioned workshop workshop
(13:26) workshop workshop it was workshop you got to do more workshop they said because I mean I didn't start it i I don't remember when I started it wasn't right right eventually at the or automatically at the beginning of the year it was like I think I found you and then I had to to teach myself and then I got them uh into it so I've actually shared your um workshop um layout with the seventh grade teacher and the 11th grade teacher here in this building and I'm hoping they're going to do um some research and work on it this
(13:59) summer because it it That would be phenomenal could you imagine if you had kids who started in fourth grade with these skills and then they kept doing it and then they got to you in eighth grade like where you could take them  i know i know i even think like okay if I can get the sixth grade teacher on board and the seventh grade teacher then we're really building something phenomenal what did you do i at one point you mentioned using AI like class companion how did that work i have not used that before okay well I absolutely love Class
(14:32) Companion and I ended up working um quite a few of my edge of protocols through Class Companion as well  um but you can set a link and create a rubric on Class Companion that um you can feed um whatever you are writing on the content so like let's say um they're writing on I'm just going to throw out like um Cleopatra and you can put an excerpt of what the kids are going to read or um some like background on Cleopatra in there um and you link that that rubric to the writing assignment that they're doing and then they can uh
(15:14) just fill it in and write and it's kind of like a search engine where they type it and then they submit and after they submit it scores them on um different components of writing like spelling um organization um having a good intro a thesis hooks and it tells them well um maybe you didn't um clarify your topic well enough here um you need to go back and it'll give them a suggestion and they can do it as many times as you the teacher said it for up to like eight times um for workshop I would give it like a generic
(15:50) I want it to write depending on what we were going to do with workshop um create a multi-aragraph or a on a certain topic that maybe I had already predetermined or made it generic enough that they could type and it was just the skills that they were the AI was evaluating the kids on and so it gave them suggestions and they had to work till they got like an eight out of eight or a 15 out of 15 wow  on finishing it and it was really helpful as far as giving them all in their individualized feedback that I could get and if they got frustrated
(16:27) because of course it's not perfect all the time and it I don't understand this they would come up and there's a teacher box that you can also uh override the score if you feel like they had already done it correctly and it just didn't quite grab  okay right that's what I was wondering too did you create the rubric or did you just say I want it on  so you go in and you can create the rubric you can tell AI exactly how you want it to grade okay  um on whatever criteria so if you want to put your six skills in there
(16:54) and that's what I did um I put the six skills in there and I had it evaluated them on voice and using all of that stuff in their writing and it said "Well I don't think the sentence structure you could do this or your sentence variety could be um your hook didn't do this." And it gave them just specific feedback on what they needed to fix and they um they did that until they got the grade that they were happy with  and one specific thing about that does can it figure out the voice thing like can it Oh yeah you added the I wanted to make
(17:29) Oh that's if the kids didn't feel like it graded them right they're like "But I did this." and maybe it just didn't pick it up for a certain reason you can go back through and say "Okay but maybe it didn't pick it up because you put it in this order and let's try to move it somewhere over didn't put a exclamation mark at the end or quotation around it then that changes the whole thing for them then they put that in resubmit and then they get a new score.
(18:02) "  Wow okay sometimes will help with that that's awesome because that was the one thing I was like well I don't know if it would grade it the way that in my mind but that's great if you can put in there the thought  yeah you can always override and and change right um and then since you only had like 47 minutes um how did you handle did you do anything with small group trios or anything did they have parties they were hard to get in sometimes I had to do them on Monday which took away the effect but it was also easier to figure
(18:36) out our diamond writer with Class Kick when you turned me on to class kick um I was like "Okay so this is great because I can see all of their work while they're working otherwise it was very hard for me to figure out who the diamond writer was by the class."  Right right and they love that feedback right away and and I there were a couple times where I did forget and then we had like a snow day or we ran out of time then we had snow days the next week and it didn't happen and they were like "But you didn't give us the diamond rider
(19:07) they were not going to let me slide." I eighth graders i literally followed everything you said to a tea as much as I possibly could the music the ambiance the lighting um  wow times I scoured your uh manual to make sure I was doing it right  you nailed it i'm like so happy and impressed did you do for the music what did you do for me did you have someone choose it or did you just have like a soundtrack that you played  well like if I figured out we were doing like something on like I don't know let's say like circus or fair
(19:44) theme then I would turn on that kind of ambiance when it was uh Halloween we did like the spooky scary ambiance um and of course you had your spooky scary wheels that and I I think I asked you for them like do you have any of them for Halloween and you sent me those and so that kind of just I tried to do thematically like let's do here and then Christmas we did uh different things that had to do with Christmas and I put some Christmas music on  yes yes that's great cuz sometimes I I've put in there to have this if the students have
(20:13) headphones you could give them a select playlist that matches what they're writing but that makes so much sense for whole class it might help kind of bring them all down to like we're all listening to this one thing and and they just kind of get on that same level of like focused energy i love that  and if they are on totally different topics that crackling fire always seems to work pretty well  yes I know i do that for myself sometimes that's awesome  did you find some I know you mentioned a couple of them who who
(20:45) turned into became like chapter book writer like they were going to write a whole  Oh yeah still to the end of the week uh uh one of the girls was like "Have you I've added more on to my book have you checked it out?" And I mean I felt bad because I mean my my son's in soccer and te-ball right now and the end of the you know school year is a little crazy i'm like I haven't she's like I added a plot twist and so they're so excited to let me like um read what's next and yeah I have a few very big inspiring writers that you made their
(21:17) year when you uh called them out at our meeting  that's phenomenal i'm so impressed and that's why I put that there was that one thing in there we could do the genre writing because there's always at least one or two or three who are like I want to write one story for the whole year you know  yeah like I want to capture that feeling i don't want them to not be able to do that  i felt like my reluctant writers mostly picked my dare cards or did the rant and rave um  they loved ranting and raving about things that they didn't
(21:51) like my kids do not like I Ready and so um  when I was giving them some brainstorming ideas I'm like "You guys complain about I Ready all the time if you don't have anything to say tell me all the reasons why you do not think I ready is good and why you do not like it what has created this persona and this feeling of this is awful so  and they're like time to tell that's awesome i had one girl who got super stuck and she ended up writing a letter to the manager at Target because there was something that was missing
(22:26) that wasn't there when she went to go get it and I'm like "That's it tell them tell them what you're feeling she was on it it was awesome that's cool what So any like final advice for anyone who's starting this out new do you have any like  I know I feel overwhelmed and that's I told my other co- teachers i'm like I kind of felt overwhelmed with all the modules when I started this and like I felt like I needed to write take notes and write things down but you have that covered like I shouldn't have spazzed out and
(22:59) like worried about the fact that um I need to know that I need to do to have trios or how many minutes am I supposed to have for this and and all those things if I if I would have uh relaxed a little bit because at first I started taking notes on everything and I was trying to keep it organized because I was afraid how I was going to remember that and then you really have it all laid out and just watch it go through it figure it out and then I went back module one okay this is where I'm going to start i'm going to rewatch this one
(23:28) and I'm going to go from there  so that's great  i felt like just just just believe in the process right because it really does work it really does work and I've been watching all your little updates i think you said something about um somebody turned uh these cards that you did that are uh um the show don't the posters i I made these um like signs for my front door so they knew that that week they were working on these  and um  Oh that's a cool idea the street and I I these things I put these on my board i know they're a
(24:03) little blurry but I had them on I I I think I I had a homebound student who I blurred the background and I how to change it right the second but  Right right um I had lots of posters and things and I tried to do everything that you um had suggested and if I didn't get it one week I knew hey I'll get it next week all came together and the kids appreciated it and they didn't know when I messed up so  totally that's such a great mindset to have and I love that idea of maybe just going through the training with like just just listen just
(24:37) soak it up first and see where you land and then kind of go back strategically i love that