‘I Wish We Could Make Books All Day!’ An Observational Study of Kindergarten Children During Writing Workshop

With the adoption of the Common Core Standards and a renewed emphasis on critical and higher-order thinking skills, exploring the relationship among writing development, self-efficacy beliefs, perseverance, and effort has become essential. The nature of writing workshop not only lends itself to differentiation among students but also provides opportunities to explore authentic texts and tasks. The purpose of this qualitative, multicase study was to explore the development of kindergarten writers within a writing workshop. Research questions focused on writer identity, writing self-efficacy, and growth as kindergarten writers. The participants, two female and one male, were randomly chosen for this study and attended an all-day, 3-days per-week kindergarten program at a public school in the upper Midwest. Student writing interviews, videotaped student–teacher conferences, and student written work served as data sources. The writing workshop framework provided a learning environment that was conducive to the formation of the three children’s writing identities. As students engaged in writing mini-lessons, text inquiries, writing, and sharing writing with peers, student writing stamina and engagement increased. Students utilized techniques and strategies of published writers. Students adopted these qualities in their views of themselves as writers. Suggestions for future research included exploring writing self-efficacy in relation to everyday kindergarten experiences, allowing for sharing and feedback, and addressing the ways in which writing workshop might provide for authentic and rigorous instruction and tasks in kindergarten classrooms.     

Enacting anti-racist writing workshop pedagogies in an online,drop-in writing club for youth

This article documents the authors' modification and implementation of anti-racist writing workshop (ARWW) practices in the context of an online, drop-in writing club, Pens Out. We sought to understand how teens perceive writing practices that are not white-normed — specifically, centring relationships instead of prizing individuality, embedding choice instead of replicating one authorial view and observing writerly craft instead of errors. As white-identifying educators and researchers, we engaged in practitioner inquiry to understand how programme participants who live in a predominately white region experience these practices. We asked: How do attendees understand and describe experiences with writing workshop pedagogies that seek to de-centre whiteness? This question has become increasingly important as politicians in the United States restrict anti-racist educational practices and content. We used conventional content analysis to observe themes across five participants' semi-structured interviews. Findings indicated that participants' relationships with each other produced inspiration and reciprocity, writing expectations from inside and outside the club affected choice and risk taking, and observing craft multimodally encouraged sharing and reciprocity. What we discovered can help teachers and leaders of K12 writing workshops implement ARWW practices and increase allyship while discussing and questioning hegemonic ideals in K12 schooling.     

‘We can write!’ The writing workshop for young learners

The study presents the process of differentiated instruction, its implementation, and impact on second graders in a Lebanese school It analyses how writing instruction has been differentiated through implementing the writing workshop to help students demonstrate improved writing skills. It examines the effects of second graders' participation in the writing workshop and discusses the factors that enabled students to develop their writing skills. Data collection includes pre- and post-writing samples, reflective journal and checklists during individual conferences. Findings show that students' writing skills improved as reflected in their progression of text, expansion of ideas, and development in conventional writing.     

Comparing Two Methods of Writing Instruction: Effects on Kindergarten Students’ Reading Skills

ABSTRACT

This experimental study directly compared the effects of two prevalent forms of classroom writing instruction, interactive writing and writing workshop, on kindergarten students’ acquisition of early reading skills. Repeated measures data was collected at four points over 16 weeks to monitor growth of 151 kindergarten students in phonological awareness, alphabet knowledge, and word reading. Results of this study showed students in both the interactive writing group and the writing workshop group demonstrated significant growth over time for each of the three outcome measures, with no statistically significant difference between groups for any of the outcome measures at any of the time points. This study provides evidence that, when consistently implemented during the first 16 weeks of kindergarten, interactive writing and writing workshop are equally effective in promoting acquisition of early reading skills.     

Meaningful Learning through Art: Nature Photography,Haiku Writing,Mobile Technologies and Social Media as a Path to Oneself

The article describes a workshop that combines nature photography and haiku poems writing with the use of smartphones in an outdoor educational setting. The workshop's purpose is to enhance the experience of being close to nature by observation and introspection. The participants use photography and haiku‐writing as means of visual and textual self‐expression. While wandering in nature, they take pictures and then write haiku poems inspired by them. Later they upload their photos to a WhatsApp forum created for the workshop. At this stage, they can write new haikus, inspired by the pictures taken by other participants, and upload them too. By the end of the day, the participants have a joint artistic product that contains all photos and haikus created at the workshop. The photographs that were chosen as samples for this article are analysed with interpretive tools based on semantic theory and Barthes’ methodology, and take into consideration the Photovoice method's principles. The poems were analysed considering their content and artistic measures and in comparison, with haiku writing's principles, and then compared to the photographs’ visual content. The analysis shows that observing nature through the camera's eye and writing poems while close to nature can generate self‐expression and introspection. The use of mobile technology in the workshop does not intrude on the experience of being in nature; on the contrary, it is used to get the participants closer to it and to each other. The workshop described here contributes to the experience of meaningful learning through art.     

Conceptual,pedagogical, cultural,and political dilemmas of implementing a constructivist workshop approach to teaching literacy

Approached as an epistemology, implementing a constructivist workshop approach to literacy can challenge the traditional paradigm of teacher-focused instruction and transform to one where students construct knowledge together and learn through active engagement in authentic reading and writing. This study illustrated how two third-grade teachers managed the conceptual, pedagogical, cultural and political dilemmas they encountered when they began implementing a constructivist workshop approach to literacy. This study validates the disquiet and discomfort teachers may feel as they utilize new curriculum, illustrates that a workshop approach requires an understanding/articulation of personal and curricular pedagogical and epistemological foundations, and encourages administrators to recognize that teachers need time and space to take risks and reflect on their work.     

English for Specific Purposes and Academic Literacies: eclecticism in academic writing pedagogy

Academic Literacies and English for Specific Purposes perspectives on the teaching of academic writing tend to be positioned as dichotomous and ideologically incompatible. Nonetheless, recent studies have called for the integration of these two perspectives in the design of writing programmes in order to meet the needs of students in the increasingly diverse and shifting landscape of academia. The aim of the present paper is to reflect on how this theoretical integration could be put into practice. Drawing on the design of a research-based writing workshop for postgraduate anthropology students, we argue that rather than a ‘hybrid’ model of writing pedagogy, a theoretically grounded but eclectic approach is needed in order to respond to students’ personal, local, and disciplinary contexts.     

Powerful students,powerful words: writing and learning in a poetry workshop

A poetry workshop can present opportunities to integrate students' knowledge and perspectives in classroom contexts, encouraging the use of language for expression, communication, learning and even empowerment. This paper describes how adolescent students respond to a poetry workshop in an English classroom centred on teaching writing that is based on their knowledge from their various life experiences and understanding of events beyond the classroom. Informed by New Literacy Studies and third space theories, ethnographic methods of participant observation were used to document an eighth‐grade urban public school classroom where a community member implemented a weekly programme using music lyrics and poetry for an entire school year. Findings illustrate how the poetry workshop encouraged students to contribute to the classroom learning context and engage critically with ideas that were relevant to their lives. Collaborating with a community member and tapping in to the powerful ways of using language to communicate led to important learning opportunities for students in this classroom. Poetic devices such as rhyme, rhythm, metaphor and wordplay enhanced and supported students' own language practices; students used these sophisticated writing strategies as they worked to convey their ideas, experiences and opinions.     

The invisible hand: designing curriculum in the afterward

This paper diffracts a curriculum design workshop via online collaboration of a collective emerging from that event. Through the workshop, involving theory, conceptual art, writing, photography and curriculum planning, and the subsequent sharing of words and images, we move beyond interrogating designs for future subjects to asking how the pedagogical imagination composes both the material and immaterial, the corporeal and incorporeal, within ecologies continually transforming in the process of making. We complicate ‘delivery’ or ‘conduit’ metaphors of education and perceive ‘design’ in co-compositions of human and nonhuman elements, resisting stasis, resisting closure. This workshop paper positions design in the realm of the artist–activist, rather than that of the bureaucrat–technician, and shifts intentionality beyond the invisible and controlling hand of humanism, as curriculum design we might do in the afterwards, rejecting instrumentalism.     

“Teaching is learning”: creating a meaningful English L2 writing class with service-learning

Integrating service-learning into content courses is a growing pedagogical model expanding in higher education institutes in many countries. To examine the application of this approach in English L2 writing classes, this study embarked on a tutor–tutee mentoring project at a Taiwanese university. The participants in this study served as writing tutors to help non-English majors with their writing skills. They went through five phases to complete their individual services—selecting a tutee, exploring the tutee’s difficulty in writing, designing a workshop for the tutee, implementing the workshop, and reflecting upon their service experience. Probing the tutors’ responses to a project evaluation survey, this study showed that the tutors generally considered the project to be beneficial for enhancing their writing skills, writing confidence, knowledge about how to improve academic writing, and awareness of their own capabilities in helping others. However, this project was limited in several aspects, such as the amount of time demanded, the tutors’ levels of teaching knowledge and skills, and some tutors’ lack of confidence. Based on the results, this study concludes by proposing pedagogical recommendations to help English writing teachers fuse this project into their writing curricula more effectively.     

Writing Workshops in Teacher Education: Making a space for feeling and diversity

Telling and writing personal stories is a powerful means of fostering teachers' professional growth. However, little attention has been paid to the professional and personal growth of teacher educators/researchers who engage with students and research participants in personal storytelling and autobiographical writing. This article explores the contribution of writing to the development of personal narratives of practice among teacher educators/researchers, and considers the potential of the writing workshop as a space where diverse voices can find expression. Drawing on phenomenological and narrative methods, we examine work with both pre-service and experienced teachers, describing the ways that space was created for a 'dialogue within difference' where participants could express themselves fully. The main questions addressed are: how does personal writing enable teacher educators to understand the experience of students; how do we as teacher educators/researchers learn about ourselves through the mirror of our students' writing and our response to it; and how do the institutional contexts of university and college affect the processes by which stories are told, reflected on and re-storied?     

The formation of conscience: A lost topic of Didaktik

Progressive and radical visions of education have accorded student voice an important place in their critiques of traditional schooling and their proposals for change. In this paper, I examine and criticize two popular conceptions of student voice. The firstvoice as individual expression- is put forward by advocates of writing workshop approaches tothe teaching of writing. Workshop advocates emphasize students' desire to express their unique selves in writing, and how traditional instruction frustrates this desire. The second conception of student voice- voice as participation- comes from advocates of critical pedagogy. These advocates call for critical dialogues among teachers and students, within which student voices would sound and be heard. I conclude the paper by sketching an alternative conception, one that affirms the strengths of these previous versions, as well as responds to their weaknesses. I propose that voice be conceived of as aproject involving appropriation, social struggle and becoming. My goal is to envision student voice in a way that more adequately recognizes the interactional and ideological complexities of student expression, so that we might, as educators and researchers, better support the flourishing of student voices in schools.     

Exploring the impact of written reflections on learning in the elementary mathematics classroom

The authors examined the implementation of written reflections in a Grade 4 mathematics classroom over the course of 8 weeks. Students in this case study engaged in a workshop modeled after Calkin's Writers' Workshop and within this workshop the use of writing as a reflective tool in mathematics was introduced. The authors explore how students used writing to evaluate their learning and how the teacher used the students' written reflections as a formative assessment for instructional purposes. Students' written reflections were coded and these codes were used to conduct an inductive thematic analysis. Analysis of written reflections via constant-comparison analysis was used for further differentiation. The findings show students' ability to accurately self-evaluate their problem-solving skills and highlighted students' confidence level with certain mathematical concepts. Teachers were able to use students' reflections as a place to begin conferring with a student for further clarification. The written reflections aided in instructional decisions and increased individual instruction when needed. The authors include implications for teacher practice and areas for future research.     

Shoes on the streets and byways of New York

The author describes his experiences helping to teach a writing workshop for the patrons of a Manhattan soup kitchen. The participants are, he learns, less migratory in some ways than he and the other teachers, yet they all share ideals about the Big Apple as well as experiences on the streets of New York City. The author quotes with permission from the participants' writings and presents the classroom routines by recreating one of the typical meetings from the early years of the workshop.     

Raising process-genre awareness in Chinese Tertiary EFL con-text: Introducing the Purdue Online Writing Lab

Writing is always regarded as a purposeful way of communicating to an imaginary other.It is necessary to adhere to the author’s purpose and make sure that it is effective,instead of pro-viding only meaningless chunks of sentences to discourage readers.However,it’s worth no-ticing that the‘invisible reader’has(a)purpose(s)too.Writing is a process of the author try-ing to negotiate with the readers by following certain genrespecific restrictions.This focus has been well captured by an online writing workshop-the Purdue Online Writing Lab,which manifests a novel perspective to view writing as a process constrained within a specific genre.With the advancement of computers and internet,the Computer Aided Language Teaching method(CALL),as presented in this article,can foreground prominence of writing principles and motivate students to learn and write creatively.Suggested use of the workshop as such is provided at the end of this paper.     

Mother–child joint writing and storybook reading and their effects on kindergartners’ literacy: an intervention study

This study assessed the effects of three different intervention programs on low-SES mother?Cchild joint activities and on their kindergarten-age children??s progress in early literacy and language. Parents in three groups (119 mothers, 5 fathers) were coached to mediate child learning, respectively, in: interactive storybook reading, writing, or visuomotor skills. A group-specific workshop was followed by 7?weeks of tri-weekly structured dyadic interactions and weekly tutorial home visits. A fourth group (control) received no intervention. Results showed implementation success: Mothers coached in interactive storybook reading or writing mediation improved in the coached activity from pretest to immediate posttest and to delayed posttest. Interactive storybook reading improved less for older than younger children, whereas writing mediation improved more for older than younger children. No transfer emerged from one activity to the other: Coaching on reading had no effect on writing or visuomotor skills, and coaching of writing had an effect only on writing. Children??s alphabetic skills were enhanced in the writing mediation-coached group, whereas linguistic competencies, unexpectedly, were not enhanced in the interactive storybook reading-coached group. The significance of writing mediation as a dyadic activity promoting literacy is emphasized.     

Not so Exquisite Corpses: Character Invention and Development in the Creative Writing Class

A method of helping students to invent characters is described in the context of a creative writing workshop for undergraduates. Using the surrealist technique of ‘exquisite corpses’, students draw composite characters for which they can write a profile. Student work is used to illustrate how such characters feed into the story writing process.     

Preschool Teachers and Children’s Emergent Writing: Supporting Diverse Learners

Early literacy skill development is critical during the preschool years. Under that umbrella is emergent writing, a small but important component of overall literacy development. This article presents two writing strategies: (1) writers’ workshop and (2) dictation within the context of storybook reading that preschool teachers can utilize to target emergent writing development. Modifications for diverse learners are also included throughout.     

文学社对延伸文学课教学的实践探索

高师院校的文学社在文学实践活动中有着独特的优势,由于中文系学生在其中占重要地位,他们可以围绕所学的汉语言文学专业内容进行一系列的文学实践活动,如参加写作赛、进行作品研讨和文学经典演出,还可以创办刊物自写、自编、自己出版。这些实训活动有助于巩固所学的文学史和文学理论知识,锻炼学生的文学实践能力,有效地延伸文学课的教学。