This book was created and published on StoryJumper™

©2015 StoryJumper, Inc.   All rights reserved.

Publish your own children's book: 

www.storyjumper.com

Strategy #1:

Establish the goals for your workshop early in 

the school year.

Instead of giving your students a complex list of complicated, long 

term goals, focus on a short list of broad goals. This will keep you (and 

your students) from getting discouraged or confused.

Example:

1. Getting students to love writing time.

2. Establishing a safe environment so that kids can take risks with 

their writing. 

3.   Setting up a workable management system to handle the flow of 

papers, folders, and so forth. 

Strategy #2: Frequently Practice and Study 

Writing 

Students will only feel safe in their writing space if they frequently 

practice and study writing. 

Make time for writing by scrutinizing your lesson plans and deciding 

what activities can be trimmed away. 

Suggestion: Breaking the class into 3 parts 

1. Minilesson

2. Writing time

3. Time for structured response as a class or in small groups. 

I had a little trouble with this strategy. They 

suggested teaching writing for 3-5 hours a 

week, which is very rarely possible. They 

acknowledged it was a lofty idea, but didn't 

offer any real alternatives. 

Strategy #3: Give students guidelines that will 

benefit them

Try to avoid the bulk of your guidelines being classroom 

management and organization based.  

Guidelines of that nature may be helpful for you, but they 

don't foster a spirit of creativity. 

It's hard to ask students to "Collect data about yourself as a 

writer, look for patterns, and take satisfaction in your 

accomplishments over time" when many students won't even 

sit down to write. 

Guidelines must be creativity centered and flexible. 

Penny Kittle's Writing Workshop Principles:

1. I expect everyone to write well. I believe every student will. 

2. Collaboration is at the heart of our work. It isn't a community unless I'm 

a part of it: working, thinking, learning. 

3. Studying the elements of craft that make writing effective will help all of 

us write better.

4. All students will listen to their own writing if I teach them how. 

5. I learn from watching and listening to students. I respect the myriad 

ways student writers think and organize their ideas, as well as the multiple 

ways all writers work through their own process on a piece. 

6. Writing is flexible: for every story and idea there are many forms that 

might lend it light. Formulas limit the development of thinking and confuse 

the priorities of a writer. Writing will always be about the idea first, then a 

form that gives it shape.

7. Every student will write with more skill and grace by the end of the 

semester. It is my responsibility to make that happen. 

Strategy #4: Value the process over the final 

product

"When we talk about the writing process, we are not 

describing a program. Rather, we are trying to reflect as 

genuinely as possible the cycles writers go through when they 

write."

-Fletcher and Portalupi

While helping students determine the writing process that works for 

them, we should still make sure they go through the steps of 

prewriting, rough drafting, revising, proofreading, and publishing. 

Those steps are necessary for effective writing, but can also turn 

students away if we impose strict guidelines on what each step looks 

like. 

Examples of students going through the steps 

in their own ways:

A student writing down a list of words in his 

writer's notebook.

Encouraging students to write their thoughts down 

in chunks.

A student doodling a picture depicting the narrative 

they are about to write. 

You've previewed 9 of 15 pages.

To read more: