Writer's Workshop

In an earlier post I mentioned how reading, writing, and math blocks in first grade follow a general "workshop model," where teachers begin by teaching a whole group a "mini-lesson," then students have a practice time where they work on skills learned in the mini lesson (individually, in pairs, or in groups) while the teacher confers with students, then the group generally comes back together for a "share" at the end of the lesson where we review the teaching point and students discuss the work they did. I wanted to included some photos taken during Writers' Workshop in our classroom recently so that you can see some of what we have been doing. Recent lessons have included using our writing folders/materials, using "spacemen" to make spaces between words, remembering where to write capital vs. lowercase letters, remembering periods at the ends of sentences, writing a "small moment" (personal narrative) story across several pages, and building stamina for independent work time.