Writer's Workshop

Writer's Workshop is a teaching technique that invites students to write by making the process a meaningful part of the classroom curriculum. In Writer's Workshop, students organize thoughts to create a story or write about a given topic and develop it into an understandable narrative with a voice and focus that present information to the reader. Students are able to use writing mechanics comfortably and the shift in their cognitive abilities to higher order thinking allows them to develop a more sophisticated sense of what makes good writing.

Mini-Lesson
A Mini- Lesson is usually a 5-10 minute whole class activity and may be as simple as doing guided writing from a story, or how revision codes are used. For instance, today's mini lesson was about punctuation. One of the many sentences I used was..

The student said the teacher was crazy

Students had to figure out where the punctuation went. Of course they said it needed a period at the end of the sentence. The student is the one making the statement if the sentence does not have any commas.

After a discussion, the students realized that if we inserted commas, it would completely make the sentence mean something different. This is what the class decided on...

The student, said the teacher, was crazy.

When the students added the commas, it set off the dependent clause. It was a fun mini lesson the the students enjoyed.