Whether you call it workshop groups, revision round-up, or buddy editing...we all work hard to help encourage our students to improve their writing through student feedback. In our classroom, we use workshop groups and help students improve their writing through these groups. Before beginning these groups, there were several mini-lessons we had to teach including:
1. What are types of feedback?
2. What is positive feedback?
3. What is feedback to improve?
4. What does it mean to write to an audience?
5. What does it mean to revise?
6. How do we work in groups?
7. How do we share our writing so others can see and hear?
8. How do we listen to writing actively?
There are so many other writing lessons that must be in place for our students to manage these groups as writing and the first time takes a lot of modeling! Here is the poster we use to teach our students the steps to workshop groups.
After reviewing the routines, we modeled with other teachers (we used each other and available specialists) to show students how even adults can share their writing, listen to feedback, and make the writing better. We got the students into writing groups to share one of the pieces. Their feedback was amazing and the kids loved sharing with an authentic audience!
This is one small part of our writing workshop for the 21st century management structure. We believe collaboration and communication are crucial for any developing (and for the matter accomplished writer) so we try to include this routine weekly. Hope this small post helps you with some ways to include these important skills into writing workshop!