In Response to Sheryl Lain’s “Reaffirming the Writing Workshop for Young Adolescents”

I liked a ton of things Lain said, so I think this post is going to be a grab bag of Lain concepts that hit me the most.
Lain reasserts what we have heard so many times these past two weeks, “ We learned by becoming immersed in the writing process ourselves” (20). It is essential to think back to the time when we weren’t so confident with our writing skills and use those memories to relate to our students. We ourselves must be writers in order to teach writing!

Confer with students during the workshop. It is better to confer with each individual student many times throughout one of their papers than to “…simply editing and grading the final draft” (21). I can only imagine how much work will be cut out of the grading process for you if you confer with your students. Who wouldn’t want that?

I really appreciate that Lain outlines the first month of her school year. She talks about her specific directions when handing out journals, which is just wonderful for me who has had problems with keeping journals in the classroom in the past. I like how specific she is with her students, they don’t have any room for guessing what she wants them to do in their journals, maybe this ability comes with experience (something I lack). She says, “I ask two things—please date each entry, and draw a line between entries. I tell them they will write at least a page a day” (21). Maybe these tips will help me in the future! I’m excited to try.

Lain gives two great suggestions while doing student conferring: firstly, when she can’t think of anything to say she just makes a personal connection to the piece, secondly, she keeps a comment sheet and a chart of how her conferencing are going. I like the idea of the chart especially, because I have been asking myself how do you grade workshops, more specifically what the student accomplishes for the day. But she answered my question! For more ideas, how do you guys grade workshops?