Professional Literature Groups

Writing Workshop: The Essential Guide by Fletcher & Portalupi
Chapter 8 What About Skills

Things that stuck with me:

We must rethink the way we have traditionally taught language arts if we are to teacher writers' workshop. There is not enough time to teach isolated skills. Portalupi found in her own classroom that if she taught skills in an isolated context, her students were less likely to apply these skills in the context of their own writing. She felt that the students benefitted most when they were embedded in the lessons because they needed them while they wrote and in a way that helped them to consciously apply the rules. So she started by writing down a list of particular skills her students were expected to know. She focused on the skills that dealt with spelling, punctuation, and grammar. She then made a grid with her students names where she could keep track of their acquisition of each skill. Portalupi compared testing skills in isolation like coaching soccer and only looking at isolated drills instead of how a child plays in a game.

Other important ideas:

*Use students' own writing (strengths/shortcomings) to determine which skills to teach & when
*Always present ideas from the perspective of a writer (i.e. writers use commas in different ways...)
*Teach students the process of editing
*Students should be their own first editors
*Editing conferences should selectively teach one to two skills that students are reading to learn
*Teach students that proofreaders often read a piece backwards to check for spelling
*Different colored pens/pencils can help show types of errors found during editing
*Teach students that a well-marked piece means that the editor was doing a careful job
*Teacher editing is most important when you use it as a process to change the writing

Ways I will change as a teacher/writer:
It was laid out clearly why skills should be embedded in the workshop. We currently have a 30 minute block of time to teach skills as well as an hour a day for writers' workshop. Maybe I will try teaching the lessons in both time frames and seeing if double-dipping proves an effective use of time. I definitely will keep spelling separate from my writers' workshop, but I do need to work on getting my students to apply the spelling rules in their own writing.
I also like the idea of creating an editing routine. I know in my own writing I make many mistakes the first time and need to carefully read it over before submitting. I need to teach my students that as well.
I also liked how this book really made it clear that teacher editing was not as important as imparting the skills to create self-directed learners.