PEF’s Funding of Writer’s Workshop Nurtures K - 8 Students and Teachers

Writing continues to be an important skill to learn in school today, and was a critical focus area for professional development for Piedmont teachers this year. Prompted by a desire to improve their practice and engage in authentic teaching, a total of 90 teachers participated in a summer and fall workshop taught by literary consultant Brenda Wallace. An expert in the field, Ms. Wallace is passionate about workshop writing and says it is a philosophy and not a program.

This academic year, K - 8 students in the Piedmont schools are benefiting from their teachers’ participation in this exciting training opportunity called Writer’s Workshop, funded by a grant from the Piedmont Educational Foundation. Writer’s Workshop is a process for learning writing strategies in a guided classroom experience, which provides continuous, repeated exposure to the craft of writing.

Workshop writing creates a classroom environment of mini-lessons and modeling where students are given a chunk of time in class to write and teachers work with them in small groups. In the Writer's Workshop, the teacher confers with the students and can ask them to share, and there is a structure that is predictable every day. This enables teachers to plan to do units of study that are genre driven, such as poetry or persuasive essays, and incorporates the writing process within class time. Students then 'publish' their writing after a unit of study of about four weeks. This process emphasizes the role of reflective analysis of writing, self evaluation, peer review and the importance of revision in producing quality writing.

Teachers at both the elementary and middle schools benefited from ongoing coaching from Ms. Wallace during the school year. For example, at Piedmont Middle School Ms. Wallace met with teachers about the teaching of writing versus "writing workshop", and the use of revision within persuasive essays. She has been working with one sixth grade and two seventh grade teachers where they plan a unit of study together, debrief, and visit each other's classrooms; a process which provides the opportunity to engage and learn from one another.

There is much enthusiasm among the teachers who have been able to participate in the Writer's Workshop professional development opportunity and the school district hopes to continue this work next year across grade level teams.