Before launching writer’s workshop, there are some beginning of the year writing lessons you’ll want to teach first.
Why not start right away?
While you can certainly dive into a workshop model on the first days of school, I like to wait. The very first thing I do is not a lesson, but a preassessment.
Giving my class a preassessment does two things: allows me to see exactly where their writing skills are and to be a time filler for me to start pulling students to do individual assessments (such as a phonics screener for reading).
What should I teach first?
The next couple of weeks (depending on your students) are filled with basic sentence writing lessons. While I usually don’t teach using prompts, most students will need reminders on how to write a basic sentence.
The first few weeks of the year are a great time to go over lesson expectations using simple paragraph writing prompts. Showing students a variety of paragraph structures will help them feel successful in writing. I recommend doing only one new structure a week.
Teaching the Basics
During the sentence writing weeks, I am teaching mini lessons about sentence structure and how to use our writing tools. Here are some example mini lessons I might teach:
What is a sentence
Sentence punctuation
Varying our sentence beginnings
Using the word wall
Stretching out sounds
Each word has a vowel
Words that need capitals
Depending on the levels of my students, these lessons might be repeated later in the year during small groups or 1:1 writing conferences.
Related Post: 3 Steps to Planning Your Writer’s Workshop Mini Lessons
Next Steps
After I feel confident my students can write simple sentences I can begin teaching them the writing process. This is also when I officially launch my writer’s workshop with my expectations and all the components.