Whole Week Lesson

For my week long lesson unit I decided to do writing workshop. The standard that we focused on was responce to literature. The week went very well and I was very satisfied with how my students reacted and responded to the readings that were presented.
First I made each of my students there own personal response to literature folders. Each day I read a story and the students responded. Before reading the mentor text each day I did a little pre-read activity where I would ask them a question or give them a situation and they were asked to draw a picture of it. For example one day I asked to my students to think of a time they felt rejected or left out, then they drew a picture of it.
Next I would read the text to the students. After reading I would introduce them to a new way to respond to literature. And then I would ask them to respond to the book I just read using the specific reponse to literature they were taught.
Everyday had a different theme. I will list them all with the mentor text below:
1.Personal Narrative, Eleven by Sandra Cisneros
2.Scary Stories, More Scare Stories To Tell in the Dark  By: Alvin Schwartz
3.Racism, inequality, KKK, Henry’s Freedom Box by Ellen Levine Bessie Smith and the Knight Riders by Sue Stauffacher
4. Parents incarcerated, Visiting Day by Jacqueline Woodson
5. Border Crossing, My Shoes and I by Rene Laniez
I believe most of the students in my class found the ghost stories day to be the most fun! Although a lot of the students found the "controversial" topics interesting and I think they enjoyed talking and writing about them in school.
After my full week of teaching we had Spring Break. After spring break we came to the schools on Thursday and Friday. So on Friday I decided to give my students an assessment from our unit. We did the pre-read activity and read the text like normal. Then I passed around a hand out to each student listing all the different ways we learned (the week before spring break) to respond to literature. Then I told them this was an assessment and they were to identify a way they wanted to respond to the literature for that day and then respond using they way they choose. I was very happy to see that most of the students did very well on the assessment. 
Even though my unit wasn't very long there were little improvements in my students. I saw some students go from only writing a few sentences to writing a page in the week or so span of time.
Actually getting the chance to implement the writing workshop in my class was very fun. I used many of the ideas, tips, and tools that were presented in Katie Wood Rays text and they were very helpful. After having taught this lesson I know for sure that I want to implement writing workshop into my future classroom!

"What happens on a daily basis in the workshop is always part of something bigger than that one day...

 "Any lesson that we teach, any conference that we have, has both a history and a future in the life of the workshop"

"Our units of study create important teaching time lines across the year"

 Units of Study

I agree that as teachers we need to have planned units of study for the year. The whole year's writing workshop doesn't need to be planned, but at least an outline of what you plan to do and for how long even if you include blank weeks for "class selected" units.

In regard to "planning" units in the writing workshop it makes me excited that you aren't suppose to plan every single thing out except for maybe the focus lesson. I like the flexibility of the writing workshop and the room it gives students to move about where there aren't any wrong answers or things to study. 

I also like that in addition to planning for specific units of study that Katie Wood Ray realizes that as we conference and look over our students work that we might find specific areas that students need help in and that we can take the time to teach these "as-needed" focus lesson. For example teaching about adjectives.

I thought the questions that Katie Wood Ray suggested that we think about for assisting in selecting our units of study, we very helpful. I appreciated her suggestion of have a unit of study on an aspect of writing that I have a strength. If I had to pick this now I definitely would pick my unit on "response to literature" and the different ways to respond. This unit would be good to implement in the beginning of the year seeing and how many lesson might involve some sort of responding to literature. I also liked Katie's idea of having two opposing grade (5th and 1st) have a literary study together in a co-genre study. I believe this would be very beneficial to both grades in having the students see how they both develop and learn. 

Lastly I liked her suggestion about have a genre study of testing. I am in 5th grade this semester and they had to take the 5th grade writing test a few weeks ago and I wondered how I would instruct my future students in how to prepare for the test. However Katie's suggestion is a great idea. To implement a writing workshop about teaching the difference between testing curriculum and writing curriculum would be beneficial. Also teaching students strategies and ways to take the writing test, I believe it would help ease their nerves.

The units of study chapter was very beneficial to me. At first I thought that the writing workshop just consisted of creating writing samples of different genres, but now I know it can be extended to more broad "units of study."