Good Days and Bad Days in the Writing Workshop (chapters 7, 8, 19)

I am placed in a second grade classroom this semester and have enjoyed getting to see the students reading and writing more compared to what I saw in Kindergarten last semester. My teacher typically reads them a book and then they have a writing assignment in relation to the text. For the past several weeks, persuasive writing has been the focus so my teacher has read many children's literature books that demonstrate good persuasive techniques and word choice. Thursday I actually implemented the writing workshop lesson because my teacher was absent and the substitute wanted me to teach it instead of her. The book my teacher left for a read aloud was Don't Let the Pigeon Stay Up Late. I then had the students go back to their desks and write reasons they could give their parents to persuade them to let the student stay up late. I told them to use the pigeon's reasons for ideas but to come up with reasons of their own. We ended up having plenty of time after writing their reasons, so I allowed students to stand up in front of the class and share their reasons for staying up late to the class. We found that many students had similar reasons and some had completely different reasons that were neat to hear about. I was pleased that the writing workshop went well and that I was able to teach the lesson sort of on the spot.

It is interesting to me that the chapters we were assigned to read this week involve distractions in the writing workshop because the next day (Friday) after my successful experience Thursday, the writing workshop was chaotic and stressful to both the teacher and myself. Writing workshop time is right after lunch each day from 12:20-1:10. The students are very wound up from lunchtime and have a difficult time settling down and getting back into the classroom mode. This particular day, my teacher did not read a text but instead had the students get out a paper they had already been working on. The paper was their list of reasons supporting their personal opinion about school uniforms. Each student had already chosen if they were for or against school uniforms. On the Smartboard the teacher pulled up the document with the reasons for and against uniforms that she had written down from the previous class discussion. She also had a list of persuasive words that the students should choose from to use in their persuasive pieces. My teacher informed the class that she and I would walk around the room and oversee their work, helping individuals as needed and also helping them edit for their final copy. This seemed like it was going to be a successful, easygoing writing workshop because the students had already chosen their side and had already begun their papers...........I was wrong. It was a disaster. Many students were talking, some were walking around the room, some were yelling mine and the teacher's name to help them, etc. I was trying to help so many children at once that it was just a mess! When I would be leaned over helping one student add some persuasive words, another student would be tapping me consistently on the shoulder from behind and yelling out questions about his/her paper. My mentor teacher was having the same problem. She kept trying to quiet the class down but it was not working. Needless to say, I had a headache by the time this writing workshop was over. It proved to be unsuccessful because many of the students who were misbehaving and not focused during the writing workshop, now only had about 1 sentence on their paper.....whereas some students were already making their final copy. So now that it was time to go to specials, my teacher scolded the class for their behavior during the workshop and threatened that if they behaved this way during writing workshop again, they would start losing recess. I felt as though this was not the ideal way to try to solve the problem of disorder and craziness. After reading Ray's chapters, I tried to come up with ways to fix the writing workshop for future lessons, but I'm still wondering what I would be able to do as the student intern to make changes without stepping on my mentor teacher's toes so to speak.

It's interesting to see how the writing workshop went just fine Thursday, but then was chaotic and not very productive the very next day on Friday. I guess this definitely proves that writing workshops are oftentimes unpredictable, just as Ray discusses in the textbook.