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Multigenre Memoir Observations Day 3

10-29-08

Today we started writer's workshop in earnest. Yesterday we went over the rules of the workshop (which I'll try to link here). The main rule is that students at their seats can not talk with one another. They can, however, go to the peer conferencing corners to quietly discuss drafts in progress. Once they have conferenced, they must fill out a conference sheet and attach it to the appropriate draft in their learning logs. Also, I have a basket on my desk that students can put drafts in for me to look at. But when they come to work with me, they must read their drafts aloud. It's amazing the errors they catch on their own this way, and having them read to me allows me to focus on content and form rather than conventions. I started off the class with a status-of-the-class meeting. This meeting is important in writer's workshop because it establishes the routine, allows me a record-keeping device, and allows the students to see where other students are at in the process. For this project, students have to create 4 final drafts that have been brainstormed, written, peer-conferenced, and significantly re-drafted! Boy, did they groan about this news. However, with the types of writing they could do being so open-ended, they jumped right in to the writing with surprisingly little bellyaching. I did have a bit of a hassle today enforcing the "work quietly at your seats" rule, mainly because these students feel that they can work just as efficiently while talking. Hmmm. Overall, though, for a group so resistant to school, these students excitedly began their first drafts! I had students working on VHS covers, posters, song lyrics, narrative poems, time lines, cartoons, newspaper articles, diary entries, and menus, to name a few.
Writer's Workshop rules; a screenshot from my Haiku course page
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