Teacher Reflection:
“This is a second grade student who came to my classroom as an average writer. She is an excellent reader, but lacked strong knowledge of story development and proper sentence mechanics. In October she published her first writer’s workshop piece – a personal narrative about her mother. Her writing was only three sentences and was very basic. I worked with her on basic mechanics and how to extend her writing with details. I am amazed at her writing progress since the beginning of the school year. Her second writer’s workshop piece was a fiction piece, which she decided to call “The Clumsy Writer” and what a difference I saw! Her creativity took flight and I saw her writing develop with the addition of details, dialogue, and “juicy and WORD WIZARD” words. In February, she decided to write a “sequel” and to write a “Clumsy” writing series. In her writing, she uses a beginning, middle, and end; she uses dialogue, and her mechanics have improved remarkably from her first writing piece. Although she still has room for growth, I am so proud that Writing Workshop not only helped improve her writing skills but it has made her absolutely LOVE writing. She is sad when writing time gets shortened. I attribute her success to the amount of one-on-one conference time we have had to discuss her individual strengths and weaknesses and her flexibility to have the choice of what to write about. I am so proud to share this writer’s workshop success story with you.”