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!