Writers Workshop in practice

This past week I was able to participate in writer's workshop which was an interesting experience to see the varying abilities and thought processes unfolding. Some students read their work to me, others visually explained their writing through their pictures, and a few were imitating the process of writing and only labeling. I found the imitating and labeling group to be the most difficult to work with in terms of guiding their writing during the writing process. I thought about two students in particular all day long and kept going back to their ability to communicate their ideas. I knew the students could express ideas, but I was unsure on how to open that dialogue and properly get it into words. Then during free time I saw an issue that one of the students was having with letter recognition and sounds. I am not sure how this impromptu game was created, but using a pointer and the alphabet on the wall, that student would physically touch letters to spell and other students noticed it and joined in. It was a positive experience for the initial student because it was empowering to know how to create words and have others understand the words you created. In a short period of time letter recognition was improving and the stress of writing was alleviated which was not seen by the student as writing, but the letters that were tapped did spell words and the order created a dialogue that sparked other students' interest. I was happy to end the day knowing that the imitating and labeling writers could express more using more writing materials like physical letters and not creating them from memory made them experiment more and try other letters that would otherwise be forgotten.