Writing Workshop: The Essential Guide

Writing Workshop: The Essential Guide is a valuable resource for developing and maintaining a writing workshop in the classroom. This text is part of my writing methods class in my senior year of an elementary education undergraduate program. Writing Workshop provides exactly the information needed for teachers who are interested in making a writing workshop work in their classroom in a straightforward and easy to read manner. As someone who is planning to teacher either elementary school or middle school, the content in this book is extremely relevant. High school teachers may have less to gain from reading this book than elementary or middle school teachers because of the content and examples that Fletcher and Portalupi choose to include.What I appreciated most about this book is that the authors recognize and acknowledge that doing a writing workshop every day in your classroom might not be realistic. Even better, they provide advice for incorporating it into your instruction, even with limited time in your schedule. The focus isn’t on making time to incorporate a full writing workshop in your classroom, it is on creating a consistent amount of time for students to write each week.Writing Workshop consists of twelve chapters, beginning with an introduction to the concept of writing workshops in classrooms and concluding with methods of troubleshooting specific issues within the workshop. The book closes by providing a timeline for a year of successful writing workshops. Each of the eight chapters in between the introduction and conclusion detail how a specific component of the writing workshop looks, functions, and is taught – both in the ideal situation and with limited time and/or resources. These include the time and space required; short-term goals for the workshop; how to launch the workshop with students; what conferring with writers looks like; how to incorporate literature in the workshop; what skills to teach; and how to assess and evaluate. Each of these sections is less than twenty pages and covers the major questions and concerns that a teacher may have who is looking to begin a writing workshop in his/her classroom.Ultimately, this book is one that I plan on keeping and using as a resource for my instruction as I have my own classroom next year.

Writing Workshop is a well-organized and easy to understand book that informs educators about the implementation and process involved in a writing workshop. Ralph Fletcher and JoAnn Portalupi lay out each step in the writing workshop process, including the foundational classroom principles necessary for a successful writing workshop. This book is definitely well suited for teachers in the K-8 classroom who have limited time for researching how to implement a writing workshop in their own classrooms. Ultimately, this book will be a quick read with very applicable suggestions for your own classroom.The idea of implementing writing workshop into your own classroom can often seem daunting, however Writing Workshop provides clear examples and answers to many teachers’ questions and concerns about this teaching method. Fletcher and Portalupi address the importance of time to write (3 days a week minimum), in addition to the question that almost all teachers ask now-a-days: “How can I assess my students during writing workshop?” Writing Workshop provides specific assessment strategies, in addition to instructions and suggestions for conferring with students about their progress in the writing process.Writing Workshop also addresses the foundational classroom principles necessary in order to launch a writing workshop. Fletcher and Portalupi make it very clear that reading and writing must go together, and that specifically, using mentor texts is vital for the success of a writing workshop. They also address the principle of acceptance: all students must feel accepted and safe in their classroom environment. While this text is very useful for k-8 teachers, it would not be as helpful for high school teachers, as many of the examples are focused toward elementary and middle school age students. For teachers who use a very rigid curriculum, the implementation of the writing workshop outlined in this book may seem unrealistic. However, I do believe it is still worth reading, as some of the ideas posed in Writing Workshop could be implemented within or as a substitute for some of the rigid curriculum.

I bought for my writing class, which is so useful and have many suggestions and strategies that I could applied to students. Highly recommended!!!

I have spent lots of money on many writing workshop texts promising "the" approach to the WW. I should have saved around $120 and bought this book first.Ralph does justice to a busy teacher looking for the core beliefs and structures to launch and sustain the WW. I read this book in two days and was ready to start my own WW the third day. He even provides the first day lesson, second day lesson, first week lessons, a WW's scope and sequence, tips on conference, assessment, and connection with reader's workshop.This book along with Atwell's reading manifesto, "Reading Zone", are the two texts that structures my reading and writing workshop. I thank them for their clarity and emphasis on less if more.

What can I say about this book? If you teach writing, you need to own it. Fletcher's style is very accessible and engaging, you feel like he's sat down to talk writing with you over a cup of coffee. It is all well-researched and field-tested best practice, but also a pleasant read that will give you much to think about in how you structure your own writing workshop with any age group of children, or even working with adults--supporting and respecting your writers no matter where they may be developmentally.

Title speaks more that it delivers.