"It’s like the difference between being a supervisor on a factory assembly line, where everyone does the same thing over and over, and being an office manager in an advertising agency, where workers are engaged in lots of different kinds of work, but all in support of a common outcome.”
"It’s like the difference between being a supervisor on a factory assembly line, where everyone does the same thing over and over, and being an office manager in an advertising agency, where workers are engaged in lots of different kinds of work, but all in support of a common outcome.”
When trying to tackle the many distractions that are present in the writing workshop I liked that Katie Wood Ray concise the main points to be presence, space, and supplies. I never realized how important the presence of the teacher is in writing workshop until Katie Wood Ray. I found it important that she pointed out that when we let our students loose to writing workshop it is not the free time for the teacher to work on other things. She describes the management of the writing workshop so well. That it is a place where many different things are happening at the same time, but it is all very productive. They all have to interact in some way. For the presence section a light bulb hit me when she spoke about how choosing not to work isn’t in option, but that we have to make sure that what were are seeing is clearly not working instead of maybe pondering their thoughts or getting ideas from other classmates. It is also important that different students in the classroom have different task or assignments within the writing workshop. This will help the flow of traffic and things. Also there need to be a routine or where things happen. For example there needs to be a sharing time area, a mini-lesson space, etc. I really like that “no talking” workshops are not allowed. I feel like it is SOOO unrealistic when one walks into a classroom and the students are suppose to be actively engaged in a project or piece of work and the room in completely silent. As Katie says it’s natural to talk to someone right next to you! I like that goal of have the workshop to be so structured that it could run itself. Lastly, I never thoughts about the importance of having all the right supplies for the writing workshop. I LOVE LOVE the idea of the sticky notes in students notebooks for teachers comments on the students work. This sounds as though it would be very effective.
“The best way to manage distractions in the writing workshop is to have plenty of attractions for students as writers”
I liked this section (although it was very small) because in talking about how the writing workshop will never feel complete, done, right, etc. A teacher will never feel like they have got a handle on it and that’s okay because that’s how its suppose to feel. I think she said it perfectly when she wrote “it’s all their different individual writing decisions that feel slightly beyond our control; it’s not their behavior that feels that way.”