Writing Workshops with Freshmen

I'm always looking for new ways to teach writing to young writers. I struggled with some of the formal writing assignments in college because I didn't have a strong background in high school. There's a fine line between teaching enough and teaching too much. Between giving them too little information and between giving them too much to handle.

My freshmen are working on literary analysis essays to end their reading of Romeo & Juliet. A ton of research went in to this lesson. I'm not sure that I've ever taught it well enough. Sure, graduates come back and tell me that I helped them, but I've never been sure of exactly what I did to be so helpful. I try to be reflective on my practice, so it frustrates me when I can't put my fingers on what I did.

After my tons of research, hours of frustration, and countless e-mails with no good responses, I came on a plan that just might work. We started with notes, of course. Probably too many notes. Definitely too many notes if you ask my kids. I know that I didn't give them enough time to think between each section. I fixed that with later groups, but my poor first period class kinda got the raw end of the deal.

After we took notes that defined a literary analysis, thesis, and textual evidence, we spent some time thinking about the topics for our essay. We wrote thesis statements together, we shared them, and then improved them. Again, this part got better as the day went on. I learned from my mistakes very quickly. We spent time creating topic sentences for the body paragraphs. We spent time looking at examples of textual evidence. I know without a doubt that we didn't spend enough time with shared writing. Shared writing would have made the whole thing easier, but then you have to deal with students who only want to take what you wrote and copy it. There has to be a better way to do shared writing, but I'm still looking for that part.

Today we are drafting. I didn't plan enough time in the classroom to get through everything, and I booked the library for today. Everything is booked for Monday so I can't even push it back for another day in the classroom. However, my hastiness is going to come to my rescue.

Students are often hesitant to come to a teacher's desk when they seem to be working. And they also sit in those tiny student desks all day long. So we are in the library. We are spread out and I am by myself. I laid out the rules before we came in. Students can sit no more than two to a table or can work on the computer. I have to be left at a table by myself. If I'm alone, then I am available to help and answer questions. If I'm with another student, we are not to be interrupted because that is there time.

It's working.

They are writing. They are coming over and getting help. I'm getting to do differentiated instruction by talking to each student as an individual instead of addressing the whole class. Everyone is getting what they need. Including me. I'm getting time to write.

This changes things for next week. But it's also feeding my instructional plans. We took notes on introductions (so very effective, I know) and we looked at some examples. But they have no clue where to start. It shows me that we need a mini-lesson on introductions next week. We all need it. What we're going to do, I don't know. But I have a weekend to figure it out.