Workshops for Covering English Language Arts

I've done parent-directed high school English before, just following what was available online with School of Hope. The typical way of doing English Language Arts with at least what I've seen of online programs is to have your units: you've got your short story unit, your novel study unit, your this unit and that. The odd multimedia thing might be put in, poetry might be part of other units or on its own. And it's what I remember doing in school: you read, you answer a bunch of questions and sometimes do essays or projects.

One thing I've seen with some of the School of Hope English teachers is a little like the Dalton Plan approach: there are some specific things that have to be done and then additional work that has to be done, but the student gets to choose from a variety of things for that additional work.

It was how I was thinking I would go about things, to be honest, with my son for his high school years. I'd be able to figure out what I wanted him to do, pretty much just copy off of the School of Hope website with my personal preferences of things, and put it in a list, hand it over to him and have him mostly work independently. But then I got inspired this week to take up a different approach I had used years ago: reading workshops and writing workshops.

This is completely different. This is not an approach where you can give a student the work for the week and leave them to do it independently. It's an approach that I think will be useful for him for two reasons: 1) He still likes to be working with me on things and 2) I think he still needs some specific lessons, and the original reading and writing workshops involve mini-lessons.

What is the workshop approach? It's hard for me to sum up. I even have books requested on interlibrary loan so that I can refresh my memory about things and learn some new things, although I have read enough online this week to take more recent things by Lucy Calkins with a grain of salt (what seems to have started out as relaxing and playful in her approach became more demanding and exacting, not what I'm personally looking for). What I remember of these workshops is this:

For a reading workshop, part of it is silent reading time, whatever the student wants to read. Ideally, the teacher is also reading. I think a reading log is kept, but perhaps just after the book is done. In any case, after the silent reading time is sharing time, where students and teacher alike share about their book, their reactions and impressions, etc. Then there is a group time together with perhaps a specific short lesson about reading strategies or something related to the book being worked through all together. I don't know at the moment if it's typical of all reading workshop classrooms, but the one I read of this week taking place in a grade 9 classroom with many struggling readers had the teacher reading aloud a selection, students following along in their books, and then students take their copies home, reread that selection on their own and write in a reading journal about their thoughts and comments. It's a little more complicated than that, but the teacher has already read the book and brings up specific things to think about and students are really given the opportunity to respond in their way.

For the writing workshop, there is usually a little mini-lesson which might be about spelling or grammar or mechanics or specific writing things--the writing process or COPS or a specific style/genre of writing--which might even include reading a sample of the style being looked at as an example to then create your own. Then the students write. The minilessons at first are instructional in terms of the direction the teacher wants to get the students moving in; later, they will include things specifically seen among the students' writing, things that need to be addressed. The teacher might be writing, too, or conducting conferences with students to see how things are progressing.

As you can see, my memory and understanding of the whole process at the moment is a little scant. However, it is a process that I think would be very useful to my son and is definitely not something where you can plan out exactly what will be done in each workshop months at a time. And since I love reading and writing, myself, it's a way that will get me reading and writing even more. :) I want to at least try it for my son's grade 10 year and take it from there.

This is one book on the workshops topic:



I've had this one out from the library on ILL more than once. Many of the books out there are aimed at the elementary teacher and this one helped me understand things better for the older student.

I've requested some other books I don't think I've read yet. Authors to search for on this topic are Lucy Calkins (also listed as Lucy McCormick Calkins), Donald H. Graves and then more of Nancie Atwell's books. I will share more as I learn more.